silent meditation and melancholy, on both sides; and when dinner came, although the most favorite dishes were upon the table, they could not eat. The farmer, resting his elbows upon the board, with his face between his hands, gazed wistfully on his wife. dame, leaning back in her high arm-chair, regarded the yeoman quite as ruefully. Their minds, travelling in the same direction, and at an equal rate, arrived together at the same reflection; but the farmer was the first to give it utterance:

The

༤.

eyes,

she was

Recovering,

Thee'd be missed, dame, if thee were to die!" The dame started. Although she had nothing but death at that moment before her far from dreaming of her own exit. however, from the shock, her thoughts flowed into their old channel, and she rejoined in the same spirit:

“I wish, master, thee may live so long as I!" The farmer, in his own mind, wished to live rather longer; for, at the utmost, he considered that his wife's bill of mortality had but two months to run; the calculation made him sorrowful; during the last few months she had consulted his appetite, bent to his humor, and conformed her own inclinations to his, in a manner that could never be supplied.

His wife, from being at first useful to him, had become agreeable, and at last dear; and as he contemplated her approaching fate, he could not help thinking out audibly, "that he should be a

lonesome man when she was gone." The dame, this time, heard the survivorship foreboded without starting; but she marvelled much at what she thought the infatuation of a doomed man. So perfect was her faith in the infallibility of St. Mark, that she had even seen the symptoms of mortal disease, as palpable as plague-spots, on the devoted yeoman. Giving his body up, therefore, for lost, a strong sense of duty persuaded her that it was imperative on her, as a Christian, to warn the unsuspecting farmer of his dissolution. Accordingly, with a solemnity adapted to the subject, a tenderness of recent growth, and a memento mori face, she broached the matter in the following question:

"Master, how bee'st thee?"

"As hearty as a buck, dame; and I wish thee the like."

A dead silence ensued; the farmer was as unprepared as ever. There is a great fancy for breaking the truth by dropping it gently; an experiment which has never answered, any more than with iron-stone china. The dame felt this; and, thinking it better to throw the news at her husband at once, she told him, in as many words, that he was a dead man.

It was now the yeoman's turn to be staggered. By a parallel course of reasoning, he had just wrought himself up to a similar disclosure, and the dame's death-warrant was just ready upon his

Conscience in

tongue, when he met with his own despatch, signed, sealed, and delivered. stantly pointed out the dracle from which she

had derived the omen.

"Thee hast watched, dame, at the church porch, then?”

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66

66

Ay, master.'

And thee didst see me spirituously?"

For

with the boot hose.

Thee

In the brown wrap, were coming to the church, by Fairthorn Gap; in the while I were coming by the Holly Hedge." a minute the farmer paused; but the next he burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter; pea after peal, each higher than the last. The poor Woman had but one explanation for this phenomeShe thought it a delirium; a lightening before death; and was beginning to wring her hands, and lament, when she was checked by the merry Yeoman:

non.

"Dame, thee bee'st a fool. It was I myself thee seed at the church porch. I seed thee, too; with a notice to quit upon thy face; but, thanks to God, thee bee'st a living; and that is more than I cared to say of thee this day ten-month!”

The dame made no answer. Her heart was too full to speak; but, throwing her arms round her husband, she showed that she shared in his sentiment. And from that hour, by practising a careful abstinence from offence, or a temperate sufferance of its appearance, they became the most

united couple in the county.

But it must be

said, that their comfort was not complete till they had seen each other, in safety, over the perilous anniversary of St. Mark's Eve.

The moral this story conveys is one which might prove a useful monitor to us all, if we could keep it in daily remembrance. Few, indeed, are so coarse in their manifestations of ill-temper as this Kentish couple are described; but we all indulge, more or less, in unreasonable fretfulness, and petty acts of selfishness, in the relations of husband and wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, in fact, in all the relations of life. It would help us greatly to be kind, forbearing, and self-sacrificing toward neighbors, friends, and relatives, if it were always present to our minds that death may speedily close our intercourse with them in this world.-L. M. C.

WHAT THE OLD WOMAN SAID.

O

An

NE summer eve, I chanced to pass, where, by the cottage gate,

aged

woman in the town sat crooning to her mate.

The frost of age was on her brow, its dimness in her

eye,

And her bent figure to and fro rocked all unconsciously. The frost of age was on her brow, yet garrulous her

tongue,

As she compared the "doings now," with those when

66

she was young.

When I was young, young gals were meek, and looked

round kind of shy;

And when they were compelled to speak, they did so

modestly.

They stayed at home, and did the work; made Indian bread and wheaten;

And only went to singing-school, and sometimes to night meetin'.

And children were obedient then; they had no saucy

airs;

And minded what their mothers said, and learned their

hymns and prayers.

K