its shrieking spirit in a cloud, and man, the being with the hand, stands appalled in the presence of the genius he has conjured. Next comes the CALORIC ENGINE, a thing like the other, dug from the mine, and shaped by the altar-light of forges, but no monster-not it; for it presses hard towards humanity's self. It has lungs of iron, indeed, and no delicate leaves of red life; but then it is the calm, blue air we breathe, that fills its ponderous cylinders; it is nearer human than its panting predecessor, and who shall say, not a more formidable rival?

Winter Nights.

UGH! What a night last night was, to be sure the waltz of the wind and the drifts.

A huge snow-bank of a cloud lay along the west at sunset-an aerial Onalaska-and white, frosty puffs came out of a clear, blue cleft in the keen northeast.

That wind! Didn't it love snow, and hadn't it queer ways of its own? Now it came from beyond the wood, sighing and sobbing like a penitent. Then

it struck the poor, dumb, leafless trees, 'till they creaked and groaned like a forest of masts in a storm; but it was tuning up the mighty harp for an Anthem— nothing more. And there's the deep, pedal bass for you feathery pines, stubborn oaks, swaying elms and whispering hemlocks, all touched into a grand harmony, by the hand of a master.

Then it whistled through the orchard, like the whirl of a lash; then it moaned down in the valley; then it roared and rumbled over the chimney-tops, and the little, timid flames lay flat upon the halfburned wood, till it passed; then it tried the doors and rattled the windows, and shook the curtains, and shrieked round the corners like a fiend, and moaned over the threshold like a foundling, and piped through the key-hole like a boatswain; then it leaped up like a giant, and tossed the old butternut like a fury, and died down again like an infant.

Love the snow? Indeed it did! It bundled it in fence-corners, to see how it would look, and heaped it in the highway, and took it up, and carried it a little farther, and down it went in a lull. In an instant it flew with it over the top of the house, and waltzed away with it over the corn-field, and whirled it up against the old barn, and sifted it through on to the

hay, and flung it over the wood-pile, and drifted it up on to the window-sills. And the hovels it crept into, and the secrets it found out, that the neighbors never knew! It rustled a bed, and discovered it was nothing but straw. It drifted down upon a hearth, and the ashes mocked it, so cold and white were they. There was no fire there! And it found an infant asleep upon its mother's breast, by the road-side, and the mother was dead; and it froze the tear upon the baby's cheek, that it should not fall to the earth, and it whirled a wreath of snow over the twain, and it went sighing on its way, like one who would not be comforted.

And what a time it had in the grave-yard, furrowing it all over with white billows, filling up the hollows, and tumbling this way and that, and rocking the willows, and swinging in the old maples. Then up it went, and waked the old church-bell from its slumbers, till there came out of the belfry a solemn tone, that blended with the blast as it swept by. Back to the house again, and how it shrieked through the garret, and rattled the loose boards upon the gables, and puffed out the smoke in the fire-place, and died meekly away, and sung softly through the crevices, and was still.

Then it swept out of the "Oak opening," on to the Prairie, and flung to a blind, where one lay languishing, and fanned an ember that had fallen into a crevice of the floor, and closed a door that had stood ajar, lest some body might see, and blew it up into a brave flame, and flared it this way and that, and went crashing on, into the heavy timber,' and was gone.

How they heaped up the fire, and drew out the glowing coals from beneath the fore-stick, and shook out the folds of the curtains before the windows, and snuffed the candles anew, and made it as cheerful as they could. Festoons of dried pumpkin adorned the ceiling; skeins of yarn decorated the window-frames ; a bowl of red-cheeked apples, and a pitcher of cider, stood on the hearth in one corner; the hired man was asleep in the other; the wee ones were cracking butternuts, mother was knitting-she's always knitting—and father was dozing over the state of the nation' as set forth in the 'Republican Times.' One of the boys was telling an incident of the day: the hunters had been out, and the music of the hounds had been ringing all day through the woods. They had started a hapless deer, and hard-pressed by the dogs, panting and wearied, it was rushing by, where the hired man had just felled a tree, when, quick as

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.

hole full, can't catch a bowl-full!

that! It'th thmoke!"

House full,

Oh, I know

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