knowledge, as witness the following. A parishioner, troubled with " difficulties" on Biblical subjects, applied for counsel to the village parson, explaining that he had fully satisfied himself as to the carrying capacities of Noah's Ark, as related in Genesis, but a serious stumbling-block still remained to him. He could not understand, considering the necessary dimensions of the Ark in question, how the Israelites could possibly have carried it about with them during their journeyings in the wilderness! A young local preacher, again, whose knowledge was not on a par with his earnestness, was holding forth upon the topic of the Raising of Lazarus. Warming with his subject, he alluded to the risen Lazarus as subsequently lying at the rich man's gate. One of his hearers, a well-known local eccentric, fidgeted in his seat for some time on hearing this latter allusion. At last he could stand it no longer, but. with his habitual lisp, ejaculated audibly-"W'y, that worn't the thame

Latharuth at all!"

The Suffolk rustic seems disposed, for some unknown reason, to laugh, or at least to smile, at the expense of his spiritual pastors and masters, as witness the following: A clergyman of a country church was in the habit of preaching from a very elevated pulpit-one of the old-fashioned "three deckers." While delivering his sermon one Sunday morning, his gaze wandered to one of the side windows, which commanded a full view of the parsonage garden. In this garden the parsonage cook-the only servant left at home was busily engaged digging a root of horse radish for her master's table. While proceeding with his sermon, he watched her stealthily, knowing that, from his elevated position, he alone could see what was going on outside. The domestic was trying hard to dig up the horseradish with a spade, but, failing this, seized it with both hands and tugged at it with all her might. The immediate result was that the root giving way suddenly, she was violently overturned, heels uppermost. "No more than I expected!" emphatically observed the parson quite in the middle of his sermon, and very much to his hearers' surprise.

The

Its antiques are gone out to sea, And yo 'll find them hard to fish up; They are gone, so is the bishopBut there is another dread enemy slowly stealing on Suffolk-a wave which no engineering skill, no breakwater or sea-wall, may avert—the wave of agricultural depression. The worst, it is to be feared, is yet to come. low prices of all cereals, with no prospect of any change for the better, are producing something like a farming panic in the county. Already, in one parish, to the personal knowledge of the writer, a large farm, formerly let at £1,200 a year, now finds an unwillEven at the lating tenant at £300. ter figure it may be questioned if it really pays the occupier's expenses. Landlords throughout the county are beginning to find farms left altogether on their hands, and endeavor to recoup themselves for the payment of the burdens by laying their fields down in grass.

But whatever the result of the crisis may be as regards landlord and tenant, it is not difficult to foresee the fate which is in store for the Suffolk farm laborer. Half-starved on the soil which gave him birth he already is. A weekly wage of 9s. or 10s., with some £8 of harvest fee (from which latter £3 or £4 per annum must be deducted for houserent), does not leave a very wide margin, when non-working days are further subtracted from the pittance, wherewith to feed and clothe a family. But even this, in time, must fail the laborer, since, if things go on as at present, his services will not be required at all. Whither, in that extremity, will he turn? Here is his own pathetic wail-but it does not touch upon the vital issue :

Fooks alluz sǎa as they git old,

That things look wusser ev'ry day,

They alluz sed so, I consate;
Leastwise, I've h'ard my mother säa.

The singer only arrives at the following impotent conclusion:

P'r'aps arter all it 'taint the truth,
That one time's wusser than the other;

P'r'aps I'm a-gittin' old myself,

And fare to talk like my old mother.

I shäant dew nowt by talkin' so:
-I'd better try the good old plan
Of spakin' sparing of most folks
And dewin' all the good I can.
-Gentleman's Magazine.

THE years of life are of infinitely less importance than its minutes. Sudden phenomena count for more in the history of the soul than calm evolution, and cataclysms for more than transient apotheoses. One radiant moment of joy may transfigure, but its glory only too often fades into the light of common day, whereas one lightningflash of pain may blast irremediably. Happy is the soul, perhaps, that has no history. The Calabrese have been said to count their time not by years but by earthquakes. They are probably unique. The rest of mankind, in its extrospective fashion, reckons by years, setting great store by them as symbolic elements. Thus, Cornelius Pounceby, on the evening before his silver wedding day, as he sat in tender mood with his wife.

"Five-and-twenty years to-morrow, Anne, five-and-twenty years !"

Yes, it is a quarter of a century," replied Mrs. Pounceby, looking into the fire, her cheek supported on a delicately veined hand.

"And you look very little older than the day when I married you," said Cornelius, heartily. "We have both worn well, very well-thank God !"

She smiled at the remark without moving her eyes, and murmured in acquiescence: "Yes, time has dealt gently with us. We have much to be thankful for.

said Mr. Pounceby, and stretching out his hand from the arm-chair and taking his wife's, he patted the back gently.

They were a typical pair of middleclass Britons in affluent circumstances: she, pale, delicately featured, with brown hair and pale-blue eyes that seemed to look at the world with patient wistfulness, and a high, intelligent forehead faintly lined with fine horizontal strokes; he, florid, robust, well-looking, despite the great bald patch in the midst of his grizzling hair and the pursiness below his eyes and around his loose, clean-shaven upper lip. In the days past she had been a beauty of the fragile lymphatic type, and Pounceby, with his bushy blonde whiskers and peg-top trousers, had been considered a very handsome fellow. Now, the one had faded and thinned a little, and the other had grown portly, thereby gaining a presence of some dignity of which, in his respectable way, he was rather proud. They both bore the marks of an easy life passed in uniform comfort among the good material things of this world.

Pounceby patted his wife's thin hand with his soft, plump one, and looked at her affectionately. "Bless you, Anne, for all you have been to me, he said. "If I seldom tell you, it is not because my soul is wrapped up in scrip and debentures and bondsthough my mind may be sometimesI am a busy man, you know, dear, and I can't help it. But we know each other by this time, eh ?"

"I know that you are still fond of me," ," said Mrs. Pounceby. "You cannot be always telling it to me-we are no longer young-and I take it as a

matter of course. You have been good and kind to me-I sometimes think that if-' "It

"Hush! dear," he said, gently. has been the will of God. We have been happy without them, haven't we? I haven't wanted more than the wifely love you have given me all these long years. And yet they have flown quickly. It only seems the other day I was sitting by you on the sofa in Mount Street and held your hand as I am holding it now--and said something bashfully to you by George, what a stew I was in! Do you remember? And you looked down on the carpet—I can recollect the pattern now, great pink roses on a gray groundand you blushed like one of them, and said Yes.'"

"I blushed very easily in those days," said Mrs. Pounceby.

And you blush now!" said Cornelius, bending forward and kissing her cheek. "Like any young girl. Ours was a love match-it was made in heaven, and it has made earth a heaven ever since.'

"Oh, Cornelius !"

"Yes. It's true, and you are an angel, if ever there was one. Whenever I hear men running down women and marriage and all the rest of it I just say, 'You fellows don't know what you are talking about, or else you have got hold of the wrong women. I have been married over twenty years, and it's the only thing for a man. Of course,' I say, there is give and take -that has to be learned early. You give way on all the little points and she gives way on all the big ones. It isn't every woman that will do that, but my wife's an angel.' I don't mind telling anybody that you're an angel, Anne."

i Well, I never contradict you, Cornelius," she said, placidly, smiling a little. The average woman always finds a grain of amusement in the average man's matrimonial theories.

"You are a model wife-always have been," he said, "and have stuck to me through thick and thin, when another woman would have had done with me altogether. You have been better than I, for you have loved me all through, whereas I-well-for a time-"

asked Mrs. Pounceby. asked Mrs. Pounceby. "It is so long ago. I had almost forgotten it-that painful episode."

"Because I have never forgotten it, Anne. It taught me a lesson-not only to keep myself from entanglements, but to know what a loving wife I had. God forgive me! What you must have suffered those six months, when I was mad and neglected you, and for such a woman! You behaved nobly, dearnobly. God bless you, my wife.'

His voice was a little husky, and he wrung her hand in rough tenderness and gratitude. The memory of her forgiveness affected him strongly, especially now, as he looked back along the years of wifely devotion. When the crash had come and his eyes had opened, he had gone and knelt at her feet in shame, and she had forgiven him, taken him back to her heart. It was the fact that her heart had never been closed to him, even during that strange period-the one wild folly of his well-ordered, respectable life-that had ever seemed wonderful to him; a revelation of the strong endurance of woman's love.

He remained awake a long time that night, his imagination stirred by the thoughts of the morrow's significance. It all the more engrossed him, because of late years he had taken his domestic happiness for granted, had reckoned it as an inalienable possession, together with air and light, warm raiment and choice foods. He had said “ my wife" with the same profound conviction of absolute ownership as when he had said "my business." He could draw upon his wife's love with the same indubitative security that he could draw on his banking account. Whenever he presented a larger draft than usual, he could do so without thought or scruple. As is the case with many florid men of full habit of body, his usual urbanity was varied with occasional fits of petulance, irritability, which the consciousness of his balance in Anne's heart rather encouraged than checked: they were but little spendthrift extravagances which he had the right to allow himself. And she was so gentle, so submissive, so patient under all his fretfulness, giving, as it seemed, love from an infinite supply. So, during most of his married

life, he had sentimentalized very little over the relations between his help meet and himself. The average, wellfed, business-minded Briton very seldom does. Many things appeal much more strongly than wedded love to his work-a-day imagination-the price of coals or the British Constitution. He reads the poem of life like prose, solemnly content therewith, and only on rare occasions does a special cadence of rhythm or a startling assonance of rhyme break upon his consciousness in momentary revelation.

To Cornelius Pounceby the silver wedding-bell was some such metrical effect. The page had suddenly been re-set, with capital letters at the beginnings of the lines, and indentations, and spacings between the stanzas, and he read it in serenity of soul. He had thanked God more or less sincerely, for many things in the course of his life, but it had never occurred to him to thank Him specially for the wife that had been given him. Now, as he lay awake, he closed his eyes and put his hands before his face and offered up a silent thanksgiving.

In the morning he went into his wife's room, kissed her, and drew her to him. She freed herself gently, and looking at him with mild eyes, asked him whether it made him happy that they had been so long together. "It has made me as happy, darling, as the lover of five-and-twenty years ago, "he said. "And it has made me happy, too," she replied, smiling. "Oh, my dear Cornelius !"

He had slipped a jewel-case out of his dressing-gown pocket, and flashed a superb parure of diamonds before her eyes. It was his silver-wedding present. There was a letter beneath it. She opened it and read that the Queen had been graciously pleased to confer the honor of knighthood upon her husband. It was a little surprise he had arranged for her. She flushed with evident gratification, and said to him quietly, You must be very proud, Cornelius." "I am proud of my wife -my own missus," he said in jest ing endearment. "And you can wear the diamonds at the next Drawing Room."

He returned to finish dressing and
NEW SERIES.-VOL. LXII., No. 3.

then went down to breakfast, whistling a suggestion of Champagne Charlie, frightfully out of tune, in buoyant mood, quite the lover, as he had said, of five-and-twenty years ago. Mrs. Pounceby was already in the breakfastroom, reading her letters. A great pile had come, in excess of their usual correspondence, and the parcel post had brought many packages. Ĉornelius cut open his envelopes, glanced over their contents. The business letters he put aside to be dealt with afterward those of congratulation from friends he tossed over open to his wife.

Everybody seems as glad as we are, I declare!" he exclaimed, laughing. "Let me see some of yours. She smiled and gave him a bundle, which he read through, thoroughly pleased. "And is that one, too?" he asked, bending over her chair.

"Yes. It is from Edward Sievking. He is ill in bed."

"What a good fellow to write. Poor chap !"

He has never got over Theresa's death. That sister was all in all to him.'

I can't bear that woman," said Cornelius. "Neither can I," said his wife. "Poor Theresa!" And she sighed. "Come, come, old lady," said Cornelius, cheerily. "We mustn't be sad to-day. Let us look through the parcels. I have been longing, like a boy, to see what's inside them, but I have been waiting for you, so that we can open them together.

He drew his chair round to the middle of the table where the parcels were, and near his wife, and began to open them. Meanwhile the breakfast, about which he was usually so particular, was getting cold. Mrs. Pounceby called his attention to it. "Oh, bother the breakfast!" he said. "Look! Redgrave has sent us one of his exquisite. little landscapes. It's worth a couple of hundred, if it's worth a shilling.

Mrs. Pounceby looked on with mild pleasure, echoing his admiration. The picture would be a special feature at

the gathering that was to take place that evening at their house in honor of the day. They discussed where they would place it. At last he postponed consideration of the question, and went on opening the packets. There were old bits of china, silver curios, some exquisite spoons, dainty pieces of fancywork done by Mrs. Pounceby's girl friends. The table was littered with brown paper, tissue paper, and string, and the wedding presents gleamed among the wreckage.

At last Cornelius took up a small square package, addressed to him, and cut the string. Only a bundle of letters appeared. He glanced at them, then started in surprise. "Why, my dear," he said, "here are some letters in your handwriting!" And Mrs. Pounceby bent forward, read a line or two, and with a scared, quick action, snatched up the wrapper in which they had come. Then she turned ghastly white. "These letters are meant for me, Cornelius,' she said, steadying her voice.

He could not understand it, but looked at her in a puzzled way; then, almost mechanically, he read a line. It was enough to send a horrible spasm of pain through his heart. He leaped to his feet. Anne, Anne!" he cried, frightened, "tell me, in God's name, what are these letters? Who sent them ?"

66

She, too, was standing, leaning for support on the back of the chair, her fragile body swaying slightly and her bosom heaving. She seemed to swallow a lump in her throat, as she replied: "Harriette Sievking-don't read them, let me put them in the fire." Her agitation, her pallor, the scared look in her eyes, the gasping catch in her voice, combined with the horrible lines he had read, brought a blazing suspicion before him, so that his eyes were half blinded. He strode up to her and seized her by the wrist, his face swollen with a sudden rush of blood. "Have you been unfaithful to me?" he cried, hoarsely.

Cornelius loosened his grasp, advanced a step toward the fire, as if to throw in the bundle, but, obeying the next and less noble impulse, he flung himself down in his chair and undid the string that bound the letters together. On one side was a slip he had not previously noted. On it was written: "These, carefully arranged in chronological order, may repay perusal."

He opened the first. It began, "My darling, my loved lost Edward," and was dated, on the wedding eve, fiveand-twenty years ago. A groan escaped his lips, wrung from his heart, and he turned a haggard, appealing glance at his wife. She was still standing behind the chair; and there she remained, like a stone, her eyes fixed on him, her cheeks bloodless, all the time that he read. The first letter was a passionate farewell. She was marrying, without love, driven to it by circumstances. The next letter was dated during their honeymoon trip, from Vitznau. It was to her friend Theresa, full of utter dejection and despair. Cornelius sped his mind back-recalled a day, when she was languid, and he had lavished all a lover's tenderness upon her. His soul grew sick. Then followed one to Sievking, less abandoned than that to his sister, but telling the same tale. Others followed, some to the brother, some to the sister, those to the latter breathing all the tortures and revulsions of her heart. He skimmed through these rapidly. Then there came one to Sievking--a soul-rent response to some passionate beseeching. She loved him, loved him with all her being, but she would be true to the man she married--for her soul's sake, not for his. Another much later showed that she had kept her vow. She spoke of her duty, prayed God to give her strength to carry it through, uncomplaining, to the bitter end of life. A later letter to Theresa wrung to agony every nerve in his body:-"You ask me why I forgive him and take him back. I do it because, as I do not love him, his infidelity has given me no pain-but, O God! a blessed, blessed relief. I could not simulate an indignation that I did not feel. I have taken it all quietly