thought, it turned, tumbled breathless at his feet, and with a mute eloquence that passes speech, it claimed his protection. The baying of the hounds came nearer and nearer there it lay, supplicating and helpless. And what did JOE do, do you think,' asked the young narrator, growing earnest with indignation-why, he just killed it with his axe! He offered me a haunch, if I would bring it home. Wonder if he thought I'd touch it. Such a fellow would rob his own father!'

MACK, curled up on the hearth, was propounding venerable riddles, the heir-looms of childhood, to a weather-bound school-mate; such as 'round the house and round the house, and pop behind the door.' 'Do you know what it is? I'll bet you don't,' triumphantly exclaims the little fellow.

'I gueth,' says the little guest-'I gueth it'th the dark!' 'I knew you couldn't. Why, it's a broom— that's all, I gueth it'th the dark!' and the young propounder laughed outright at the idea. House full, hole full, can't catch a bowl-full!' 'Oh, I know

that! It'th thmoke!'

And so, with childish prattle and sweet content, the evening went away, as many an evening has done, never to return.

The circle gradually narrows round the fire. At last, they are all gone but you. Even Lucy has let out her 'intended,' as the neighbors call him, at the front door, and comes into the kitchen with very red cheeks, and shy as a bird. She glances at the clock, bounds away with a laugh, and now you hear her light, merry step, as she trips up stairs to the music of her own sweet thoughts.

You open the hall door; a great gust puffs out the light, but by the flashes of the fire, you see two long, narrow drifts of fine snow, that have sifted through the crevices round the outer door.

The wind has sighed itself to sleep, like a tired child, and soft, sweet tones of music seem to rise and fall in the snowy air. Now receding, now approaching; now dying, now swelling like a great Æolian. And it is an Æolian: that mighty harp with a single string, the Telegraph. And the fingers of the wind, in gentler mood, are twanging a lullaby to the storm.

Oh! mighty Harper is the Wind, and here is an instrument worthy of its handling: an orbit wherein the dumb thunder-bolt is hurled from mart to mart; a bolt that, like the thunder of Sinai, has grown articulate. It is the pulse of the world; the fibre of universal thought.

There, now, a wanderer from the land of gold has

returned to New-York.

on the stroke of eight.

It is morning. The clock is

Day has risen from the wave, and in his chariot of fire, has gone on towards the west, making his rounds of the globe. He has been gone a half hour. The glad word conveying the intelligence of that wanderer's arrival, has been committed to the telegraph. On it glides westward, westward still. Roll on, thou glorious chariot of day! The courier of love shall o'ertake thee yet. Nearer, nearer; the day and those words are side by side. The sun is distanced-is left behind—and the quivering lightning flutters in at the windows on Main Street, like some sweet bird

'Let loose in eastern skies.'

And it is not yet eight of the clock in La Porte! So a few humble, loving syllables, that are nothing to you or to me, lead the great sun in his journey round the world.

THE Child-world, in this quarter, is in 'an active state of unrest.' The school in the Quaker neighborhood' have sent a challenge, in due form, to this

district, to spell; so, to-night, 'the war of words' is to be waged, in the white school-house on the hill. There is a great overhauling of old · Elementaries,' and a wonderful furbishing up of frontispieces, and turning over of clean collars, preparatory to the grand mêlee.

SPELLING SCHOOLS!

Have you forgotten them? When, from all the region round about, they gathered into the old log school-house, with its huge fireplace, that yawned like the main entrance to Avernus. How the sleigh-bells-the old-fashioned bells, big in the middle of the string, and growing small by degrees and beautifully less' towards the broad, brass buckle-chimed, in every direction, long before night— the gathering of the clans. There came one school, 'the Master'—give him a capital M, for he is entitled to it-Master and all, bundled into one huge, red, double sleigh, strown with an abundance of straw, and tucked up like a Christmas pie, with a half score of buffalo robes. There half a dozen cutters,' each with its young man and maiden, they two and no more. And there, again, a pair of jumpers, mounting a great, outlandish-looking bin, heaped up, pressed down and running over, Scripture measure, with small collections of humanity, picked up en

route, from a great many homes, and all as merry as

kittens in a basket of wool. and ripe, red lips, that one

And the bright eyes,

caught a glimpse of,

beneath those pink-lined, quilted hoods, and the silvery laughs that escaped from the woolen mufflers and fur tippets they wore then-who does not remem ber?-who can ever forget them?

The school house destined to be the arena for the conflict, has been swept and garnished; boughs of evergreen adorn the smoke-stained and battered walls. The little pellets of chewed paper have been all swept down from the ceiling, and two pails of water have been brought from the spring, and set on the bench in the entry, with the immemorial tin-cupa wise provision indeed, for warm work is that spelling!

The 'big boys' have fanned and replenished the fire, till the old chimney fairly jars with the roaring flames, and the sparks fly out of the top, like a furnace-the oriflamme of the battle.

The two Masters' are there; the two schools are there; and such a hum, and such a moving to and fro! Will they swarm?

The oaken ferule comes down upon the desk with emphasis. What the roll of the drum is to armies,