existence within his dwelling-place of any book not of his own special kind would impart to him the sort of feeling of uneasy horror which a bee is said to feel when an earwig comes into its cell. Presentation copies by authors were among the chronic torments of his existence. While the complacent author was perhaps pluming himself on his liberality in making the judicious gift, the recipient was pouring out all his sarcasm, which was not feeble or slight, on the odious object, and wondering why an author could have entertained against him so steady and enduring a malice as to take the trouble of writing and printing all that rubbish with no better object than disturbing the peace of mind of an inoffensive old man. Every tribute from such dona ferentes cost him much uneasiness and some want of sleep-for what could he do with it? It was impossible to make merchandise of it, for he was every inch a gentleman. He could not burn it, for under an acrid exterior he had a kindly nature. It was believed, indeed, that he had established some limbo of his own, in which such unwelcome commodities were subject to a kind of burial or entombment, where they remained in existence, yet were decidedly outside the circle of his household gods.

of the persons in the confusion of a pantomime or a farce has his own position and functions. After all, he was himself his own greatest curiosity. He had come to manhood just after the period of gold-laced waistcoats, smallclothes, and shoe-buckles, otherwise he would have been long a living memorial of these now antique habits. It happened to be his lot to preserve down to us the earliest phase of the pantaloon dynasty. So, while the rest of the world were booted or heavy shod, his silkstockinged feet were thrust into pumps of early Oxford cut, and the predominant garment was the surtout, blue in colour, and of the original make before it came to be called a frock. Round his neck was wrapped an ante-Brummelite neckerchief (not a tie), which projected in many wreaths like a great poultice and so he took his walks abroad, a figure which he could himself have turned into admirable ridicule.

One of the mysteries about him was, that his clothes, though unlike any other person's, were always old. This characteristic could not even be accounted for by the supposition that he had laid in a sixty years' stock in his youth, for they always appeared to have been a good deal worn. The very umbrella was in keeping These gods were a pantheon of a very extra-it was of green silk, an obsolete colour ten ordinary description, for he was a hunter after years ago and the handle was of a peculiar other things besides books. His acquisitions | crosier-like formation in cast-horn, obviously included pictures, and the various commodities which, for want of a distinctive name, auctioneers call "miscellaneous articles of vertu." He started on his accumulating career with some old family relics, and these, perhaps, gave the direction to his subsequent acquisitions, for they were all, like his books, brought together after some self-willed and peculiar law of association that pleased himself. A bad, even an inferior picture he would not have for his taste was exquisite-unless, indeed, it had some strange history about it, adapting it to his wayward fancies, and then he would adopt the badness as a peculiar recommendation, and point it out with some pungent and appropriate remark to his friends. But though, with these peculiar exceptions, his works of art were faultless, no dealer could ever calculate on his buying a picture, however high a work of art or great a bargain. With his everaccumulating collection, in which tiny sculpture and brilliant colour predominated, he kept a sort of fairy world around him. But each one of the mob of curious things he preserved had some story linking it with others, or with his peculiar fancies, and each one had its precise place in a sort of epos, as certainly as each

not obtainable in the market. His face was ruddy, but not with the ruddiness of youth; and, bearing on his head a Brutus wig of the light-brown hair which had long ago legitimately shaded his brow, when he stood stillexcept for his linen, which was snowy whiteone might suppose that he had been shot and stuffed on his return home from college, and had been sprinkled with the frowzy mouldiness which time imparts to stuffed animals and other things, in which a semblance to the freshness of living nature is vainly attempted to be preserved. So if he were motionless; but let him speak, and the internal freshness was still there, an ever-blooming garden of intellec tual flowers. His antiquated costume was no longer grotesque-it harmonized with an antiquated courtesy and high-bred gentleness of manner, which he had acquired from the best sources, since he had seen the first company in his day, whether for rank or genius. And conversation and manner were far from exhausting his resources. He had a wonderful pencil-it was potent for the beautiful, the terrible, and the ridiculous; but it took a wayward wilful course, like everything else about him. He had a brilliant pen, too, when be

My gentle Kate, and my sweet Isabel:
Long of our promised coming, day by day
It had been their delight to hear and tell;
And now, when that long-promised hour was come,

chose to wield it; but the idea that he should | The younger twain, in wonder lost were they, exercise any of these his gifts in common display before the world, for any even of the higher motives that make people desire fame and praise, would have sickened him. faculties were his own as much as his collection, Surprise and wakening memory held them dumb.

His

For in the infant mind, as in the old,

When to its second childhood life declines,
A dim and troubled power doth memory hold:
But soon the light of young remembrance shines
Renewed, and influences of dormant love
Wakened within, with quickening influence move.

and to be used according to his caprice and
pleasure. So fluttered through existence one
who, had it been his fate to have his own bread
to make, might have been a great man. Alas
for the end! Some curious annotations are all
that remain of his literary powers-some draw-
ings and etchings in private collections all of
his artistic. His collection, with its long train
of legends and associations, came to what he
himself must have counted as dispersal. He
left it to his housekeeper, who, like a wise
woman, converted it into cash while its mys-
terious reputation was fresh. Huddled in a
great auction-room, its several catalogued items
lay in humiliating contrast with the decorous
order in which they were wont to be arranged. Soon they grew blithe, as they were wont to be;
Sic transit gloria mundi.

The Book-Hunter.

O happy season theirs, when absence brings
Small feeling of privation, none of pain,
Yet at the present object love re-springs,

As night-closed flowers at morn expand again!
Nor deem our second infancy unbless'd,
When gradually composed we sink to rest.

Her old endearments each began to seek:
And Isabel drew near to climb my knee,

And pat with fondling hand her father's cheek;
With voice, and touch, and look, reviving thus
The feelings which had slept in long disuse.

THE MAN WHO STOLE A MEETING- leaned on't without breaking it down. And

Half the blinds were off their hinges, and the rest flapped in the wind. The front-door step had rotted away. The porch had once a good floor, but for years Jedwort had been in the habit of going to it whenever he wanted a board for the pig-pen, until not a bit of floor was left.

"It was amazing to see what the mother | less. It was built originally in an ambitious would do to keep her family looking decent style, and painted white. It had four tall with the little means she had. For Jedwort front pillars, supporting the portion of the was the tightest screw ever you saw. It was roof that came over the porch,-lifting up the avarice that had spoiled him, and came so near eyebrows of the house, if I may so express turning him into a beast. The boys used to myself, and making it look as if it was going say he grew so bent looking in the dirt for to sneeze. pennies. That was true of his mind, if not of his body. He was a poor man, and a pretty respectable man, when he married his wife; but he had no sooner come into possession of a little property than he grew crazy for more. There are a good many men in the world, that nobody looks upon as monomaniacs, who are crazy in just that sort of way. They are all for laying up money, depriving themselves of comforts, and their families of the advantages of society and education, just to add a few dollars to their hoard every year; and so they keep on till they die and leave it to their children, who would be much better off if a little more had been invested in the cultivation of their minds and manners, and less in stocks and bonds.

"Jedwort was just one of that class of men, although perhaps he carried the fault I speak of a little to excess. A dollar looked so big to him, and he held it so close, that at last he couldn't see much of anything else. By degrees he lost all regard for decency and his neighbours' opinions. His children went barefoot, even after they got to be great boys and girls, because he was too mean to buy them shoes. It was pitiful to see a nice, interesting girl like Maria, go about looking as she did, while her father was piling his money into the bank. She wanted to go to school and learn music, and be somebody; but he wouldn't keep a hired girl, and so she was obliged to stay at home and do housework; and she could no more have got a dollar out of him to pay for clothes and tuition, than you could squeeze sap out of a hoe-handle.

The only way his wife could ever get anything new for the family was by stealing butter from her own dairy, and selling it behind his back. You needn't say anything to Mr. Jedwort about this batch of butter,' she would hint to the storekeeper; but you may hand the money to me, or I will take my pay in goods. In this way a new gown, or a piece of cloth for the boys' coats, or something else the family needed, would be smuggled into the house, with fear and trembling lest old Jedwort should make a row and find where the money came from.

"But I began to tell about Jedwort leaning on the gate that morning. We had all noticed him; and as Dave and I brought in the milk, his mother asked, 'What is your father planning now? Half the time he stands there, looking up the road; or else he's walking up that way in a brown study.'

"He's got his eye on the old meeting-house,' says Dave, setting down his pail. He has been watching it and walking round it, off and on, for a week.'

"That was the first intimation I had of what the old fellow was up to. But after breakfast he followed me out of the house, as if he had something on his mind to say to

me.

"Stark,' says he at last, 'you've always insisted on't that I wasn't an enterprisin' man.'

"I insist on't still,' says I; for I was in the habit of talking mighty plain to him, and joking him pretty hard sometimes. 'If I had this farm, I'd show you enterprise. You wouldn't see the hogs in the garden half the time, just for want of a good fence to keep 'em You wouldn't see the very best strip of land lying waste, just for want of a ditch. You wouldn't see that stone wall by the road tumbling down year after year, till by-and-by you won't be able to see it for the weeds and thistles.'

out.

"Yes,' says he, sarcastically, 'ye'd lay out ten times as much money on the place as ye'd ever git back agin, I've no doubt. But I believe in economy.'

"That provoked me a little, and I said, Economy! you're one of the kind of men that'll skin a flint for sixpence and spoil a jack-knife worth a shilling. You waste fodder and grain enough every three years to pay for a bigger barn-to say nothing of the inconvenience.'

"Wal, Stark,' says he, grinning and scratching his head, I've made up my mind to have a bigger barn, if I have to steal one.' 88

"That won't be the first thing you've stole. A caple of cress-roads bounded it on two sides; neither,' says I.