for the truth. Again and again have we heard our name called out in the ears of the town magnates, and received what mail matter was rightfully ours through the hands of we could not tell how many accommodating men and boys, mixed together in officious confusion.

On mooted points of law- especially constitutional law-the country Postmaster is strong beyond any one's estimate. He has the mother-wit to keep a handful of stray old Congressional Reports, bound and lettered, on the dusty shelf at his back, as well as a more solid-looking copy of the Statutes, in imposing calf; and, with this legal stock in trade, he sets the town at defiance. Of course he is not to be contradicted on matters pertaining to the nation and its welfare, for, sustaining such close relations with the Government, how is it to be supposed that any other man can know some things as well as he? Even Goldsmith's school-master is no match for him, in the line of "arguing still." Not even a member of the President's Cabinet can give an opinion with more pragmatic precision, or deliver himself with greater assurance of the intentions of the august Washington authorities. He stands for the village Rajah-the Great Mogul at

the head of the political wigwam of the place. National politics take their local coloring by being passed through the rather opaque medium of his official commentary. He is sketched, in the party's mind, as the one man who keeps the keys, the seals, and the secrets. If a single man contemplates so reckless a step as party backsliding, or defection, he of all the rest is close behind him to make him quake in whatever clothes he happens to have on!

Thus does the Postmaster practically become the centre of town patronage and town consequence. All look up to him, as they do to the village flag-staff, from which the "stars and stripes" are in the habit of waving. If any grumble at this or at that, it makes very little difference: they are obliged to keep on even terms with him, and pocket all their dissatisfactions in silence. The women either like or dislike him, and that very decidedly. The younger portion, however, are careful to drop no syllable that can reach the Postmaster's family, and so make infinite trouble for themselves.

When they trip across into the office, they expect a joke from him, rather slyly, about their distant correspondents, — which shows with what studious thoroughness he informs

himself, and what a memory, passing all wonder, he has. Indeed, it affords him intense satisfaction to poke fun at the girls about their beaux, and to tease them with intent to draw forth still more of their little love-secrets.

Thus, no doubt, would he like to pass long afternoons, alternately running over odd papers which tardy subscribers have failed to call for, and gossiping with the girls concerning the trifling love-secrets that form the staple of their letters from places not always very far off.

It is, therefore, an unpardonable mistake to take city postmasters - the New York, and Philadelphia, and Boston magnates as the fair representatives of these officials throughout the land. If you would make a study of the Postmaster, you must contemplate those who compose, under government favor, the rank-and-file of the office-holding army. In the rural districts the real Postmaster excels. There he stands forth, statuesque in his glory, -columnar and individual in the social landscape. The whole town leans on him, volves around him. He attracts all local and personal interests, like iron-filings, to his official lodestone.

re

THE POOR-HOUSE.

THERE is many a person who is born with a dread of some day "coming on the town;" and they actually do what they are able — unwittingly, of course to realize their fears. Theirs is a peculiarly unfortunate inheritance; for, by all odds, the continual shrinking from imaginary evil is the cruelest test of the elasticity of the human spirit.

Yet we are not ourselves to forget that the author of the immortal Declaration died poor, leaving his friends to devise a friendly lottery-scheme on his behalf; and another Virginia President's remains lay for many a year without so much as a slab of stone to mark the spot where they were buried; and a wealthy patriot like Robert Morris, the financier of the Revolution, whose Hercules shoulder lifted our national wagon out of the miry difficulties in which it was set, even he was thrown into jail for debt, and suffered what common souls cannot conceive of.

Perhaps, too, these timid ones have some of them heard of Columbus in chains; or of Captain John Smith in a London hovel, dying in beggary and want; or of Beau Brummel coming to a pauper's end in a mendicant hospital at Caen; or they reflect that, since the periodic revulsions of these latter days have held the social road, our most affluent men are suddenly smitten as with a leprosy, and cast down into the pit of beggary and despair. There is, after all, much more in these things. than either the careless or self-reliant person dreams of; and what wonder, then, that there should at least be some to live and die in the dark cloud of this fear, making their world hardly more than a cruel system of imprisonment.

The Poor-house is but a dismal, doleful place, at best. In many of the country towns of New England, the town's poor-nicknamed paupers are regularly hired out to the lowest bidder. He takes the job off the town's hands, risks from sickness and death thrown in. He estimates pretty closely how much work he may be able to wring out of this one on the farm, and of that one in the house, and of a third in the shop or at the saw-mill. He prudently reckons their capacity