What could it all mean?

Three women in secret

conclave, stood sentry at the kitchen-door. Why did they look at me? What had I to do with it, or them, or any thing?

An exodus was effected; once in the fields, I breathed freer, and who wonders?

Mercy on the house that never had a baby in it! Don't you remember when you were 'little,' how you sighed for a playfellow, and how, some bright morning, they took you mysteriously and smilingly by the hand, and led you into a darkened room, with a gleam of white drapery in it; and how you trembled in your little shoes as you stood there, every thing was so dim, and solemn, and whispered; and how Aunt Green, or Brown, or some body, took out, exactly from the midst of the drapery, a nice little bundle, bordered about with ribbon, and you discovered a face of the littlest, and eyes of the bluest, and fingers of the tiniest, and you were enjoined to kiss it, and love it, and 'be good' to it, for ever and ever? And you asked all in a breath, whence it came, and when it came, and who brought it, and whose it was, and were told, from Heaven-last night—an Angel-yours!' How you wished you had been awake, to see that beautiful Angel with her long white wings! And did she go

'right away,' and would she come again and bring another?

Perhaps they averred that the precious little creature was found, like a young quail, hidden beneath some marvellous leaf. Many a time, whether you will own it or not, now you have grown old and wise, you have peeped beneath the plantains and the bur docks, in the secret hope of finding another little Moses, ready to smile, that you might have all to yourself. Many a time, whether you will own it or not, you watched some parting in the summer cloud, and thought you saw a wing and an angel; and then, it wasn't a wing, but a little cherub coming all alone, sailing on a little cloud all crimson and gold; and then, it was just a face that looked through, and was withdrawn; and then, you grew weary with watching, and your eyes ached with gazing, and you fell asleep under the tree, and dreamed it was all true and more! What wouldn't you give for one such dream now?

Just heard from CHARLES'.

Enchantment, necro

mancy, sorcery, and incantation are all true—never doubt it! His house is haunted! A "charmer" has come into that quiet family, and the wonders she

works, would put Persians and East Indians to their trumps.

The first thing she did was to give the wheel of time a tremendous whirl forward, and throw a respectable couple, if not exactly into "kingdom come," at least into the generation on before, and transform them into grandfather and grandmother in a twinkling; turn innocent young women into aunts, and roistering boys into uncles, before they knew it, and cap the climax, by making a young pair, who fancied, a minute ago, they had their fortunes to make, independent for life. And all this time, and doing all this, she never said a word!

But this Charmer wrought other wonders. She made an error of one in the tables of a Census-taker, miles away, and puzzled him sadly; she prolonged a piece of delicate flannel then going through the loom, just three yards; gave the spool of the ribbon-weaver a dozen turns more than was intended; kept the weary lace-maker, in spite of herself, full two hours longer at her task, she wondering, the while, why she tarried at her toil. And so she went on with her witchery, further than I have time to think or patience to tell, and yet-people profess to believe that the days of enchantment have passed away!

'The name of this Charmer?' inquires some body, and there he has me at fault. She is nameless, like the clouds and the flowers. She came unannounced. She bore no letters of introduction. She presented no card; and indeed, 'saving and excepting' the wonders she works, she is an emphatic no body. Strange world, isn't it? Strange visitors enter it, don't there?

An Unscientific Chat about Music.

THERE is, as every body knows, a trumpet-shaped little instrument, delighting in the barbarous name of Stethoscope, made at some small expense of wood, ivory, and skill, wherewith the surgeon plays eavesdropper to the clink of the machinery of life; and there's a thought in it alike for the preacher and the poet. It is sublime, indeed, to bring one's ear close to the heart's red brink, and list the tinkling of the crimson tide; but there is something more sublime than this. Beneath that wave incarnadine, in every heart, lie pebbly thoughts in rhyme, and gems" of purest ray," beyond the ken of surgeon, and beyond his skill-the emotion half uttered in a sigh, the hope

half written in a smile, the grief betokened in a

tear.

! ?"

Now that sublimer something is-POETRY. —Yes, most Incredulous, Poetry-for what is it, after all, but the stethoscope of the soul, whereby we hear the music of a healthful heart, and the footfall of lofty thought in the hall of the spirit? What is it but the thought itself, warm and living, throbbed out by one heart, only to find lodgment in another? And what is MUSIC, but the melodious wing that wafts and warms it on its mission round the world-that will not let it droop-that will not let it die?

"Auld Lang Syne"-here it is, glittering with the dews of its native heather sung last night in a hovel, sung this morning in a hall. “When shall we meet again?" Within one little year how many lips have asked how many knells have answered it! Where pipes Cape Horn through frozen shrouds, the mariner hums "Sweet Home," to-night; where hearths are desolate and cold, they sing "Sweet Home," in Heaven. With how many blended hearts, from Plymouth to the Prairie, "Dundee's wild warbling measures rose" last Sabbath morn-the strain the Covenanters sang-the tune that lingers yet along the banks of murmuring Ayr! The "Star Spangled