looking farm-houses dotted the landscape, 'like dimples in a smiling face.' The late afternoon was perfect, the sun-set glow was over land and sea, and we did not feel at all inclined to grumble at the 'mild declivity' of our horses. At last our driver reined up before a large white house, and thus he spake: 'You two'most beat out? Wall, this is the last but one. Jest stop here to give a loveletter to jest the prettiest pattern of a Bosting gal that 's ben heer all summer.' I, of course, resented this direct insult to the Bosting gal then in the coach.

As we stopped, from the open door-way flashed down the petite figure of the 'Bosting gal,' looking so fresh and lovely in her dress of forget-me-not blue, as almost to justify the horrid candor of the driver. No need, O golden-haired Georgina! for your robe to say 'forget me not.' Who could forget thee, having once beheld thee, belliximia mia? I know one youth who could not - 'a youth whom I loved' in a quiet way; a kinsman, in fact, whom this small maiden had slain in one short month, with her tiniest hands and twinkling feet, her lovely hair, and je ne sais quoi of voice, and ich weiss nicht was of glances, and chi lo sa? of gesture, and quien sabé? of smiles, and ne znaíu of repose, and Teuton-sample of every thing! Was it the last gleams of sun-shine which lighted her up so beautifully as 'she stood by the garden gate' expectant? Or was it the other way, was it not the sun-shine of her golden hair, her glowing youth, which lighted the little garden up? You may look skeptical, but I assure you it was the latter, for the sun had already said to us, 'Au revoir!' I naturally regarded this maiden-let with interest. Georgina! with that 'yellow, yellow hair,' your robe should have been sea-green, only then you would have certainly met with the fate I had feared for my Fanny. The sea-men would have surely taken you down to their crystalline caves; you could not have escaped; but my young friend would. Why did you not wear green ?

I

Good night, my little cat, sit on the steps and read your love-letter. am not a witch, (though some one was so ill-bred as to tell me I was the other day,) but I can tell who wrote it, I think, for I am Boston. Read it and then look at the harvest moon, [no, Fanny, I am not going to say, ‘like Venus rising from the sea,'] 't is the last you will see this season at Oatland; and do n't forget as you gaze, to quote Herr Hiawatha:

ON such a lovely night as this
She woke ENDYMION with a kiss,
When sleeping in her grove,
He dreamed not of her love!'

Now

Forget it! of course you won't, young ladies never forget to quote that. turn your pretty head a little, and see that planet watching the moon with you, and say, as of course you will say: 'Is it the tender star of love?' Certainly, it always is, 'Venus,' you know! Good-by. I hate to say good-by to you, with the love-light in your eyes and the love-note in your handikins. Dream on, fair child, (but get your water-proof first!) for to-night, at least, that youth, beauty and love are eternal as the 'inconstant moon,' the changing tide. Forget that your golden hair must ever change to gray, [and it need not if you use 'Mrs. Allen's hair-dye !'] that all nights shall be bathed like this in

moon-light! Do not think that the star of love can ever sink beneath the horizon, or the crimson light fade away, leaving your life in gloomy darkness. [Good heavens ! shall we never reach 'Hotel Jenkins?' not if I spoonyize much longer.] Here we are! house- unmitigated New-England. Very square, great quantity of white paint, greenest of green blinds, but a piazza on all sides! therefore I shall be happy. Who can be perfectly miserable in a house which has a piazza? The whole arrangement has a well-to-do, guesswe'll-stop-here aspect; and we alight with a 'cheerful courage.' Our landlady greets me at the door- in fact, she quite fills up that passage. Seeing her portly figure, Fanny murmurs in my un-Danted ear:

'Who enters here leaves want behind!'

'Wall, you're the Bosting folks, I 'spose? Pleased to make your acquaintYou an't related to the Mackerels of Portsmouth, I presume??

ance.

'No.'

'Thought you might be; nice folks they are. Just lost their second darter-fine young woman. Step right in, ladies, and stop a spell in the setting-room, and I'll get supper ready right away. Green or black tea? some say green a'nt wholesome—'

At this epoch I felt Fanny leaning heavily on my shoulder. 'Are you faint, darling?' I inquired.

'Faint!' she replied; 'why, I shall die of that woman before supper is ready, unless you stop her tongue and her English.'

I am

Then I rose superior, and remembering the episode at the station, had my little revenge. 'This is a weakness, Fanny, which you must overcome. positive her supper will be delicious, whatever her English is—and 't is good Massachusetts Yankee-American English.'

Fanny at this recovered, (in self-defence, as she wished to cut short my tirade,) and concluded not to view Mrs. Jenkins with a 'cricket's eye.' And after the evening meal of delicious bread, crumpets, blackberries, and such cream! a jug full- (in fact, we had more cream at table than water in our chambers,) ah! even at this distant epoch, I weep to think of that creamiest of cream, and compare it to the cerulean blue of Boston cream! - Fanny concluded that Mrs. Jenkins spoke 'excellently well,' she cooked so, at all events. [Three pages of tender devotion to Fanny, and one affectionate scene, are here stricken out by an 'unanimous vote.']

THE large double-room we had engaged by letter, answered only to our expectations by being a front-room, looking toward the sea; there was no large or double about it. The wash-stand was evidently intended by its creator for a big doll's parlor; the towels, for a very small doll's use; the looking-glass was a premeditated insult; the closet was large enough, perhaps, to admit one very narrow linen collar. I looked at the wash-stand, and that of the usual morning ablutions; I gazed at the closet, and thought of my dresses. I turned to Fanny and naturally hated her. The only merit the room possessed was a negative one; it did not have paper shades at the windows, but very nice

white linen curtains; I should also, in justice add, that there were three windows, giving us a glorious sea-view.

'Oh!' said Fanny, as she stood at one of them, [brushing her hair,] 'see how all nature herself welcomes us! Look at that moon-light track!'

'Yes,' I answered, 'all nature and all nature's musquitoes - them! Look at the ceiling, if you please, and see the tracks there.' '

Fanny looked and visibly shuddered. 'We shall sleep no more,' she cried. 'Musquitoes murder sleep!'.

The musquitoes did welcome us indeed. After an exhausting combat of one hour, Fanny said she could not lie there another moment to endure such torments. 'If Father Abraham would not send relief to her, Robert Browning should. She was going to read something to soothe her troubled spirit.'

'What work shall you select for this nocturnal pastime ?' I asked. 'Some account of the habits of that interesting and infernal little insect, the 'musquito,' would be admirably adapted to the occasion.'

'Ah! yes,' said Fanny, 'that shall be the theme, rendered into verse by Robert Browning. And here he is! dear old battered fellow, at the top of my trunk, ready for any emergency. Now, dear friend, whose naturally sweet disposition is at this moment slightly acidulated, permit me to soothe and sweeten you.

Ir you have ears, prepare to close them now,

I am about to discourse on 'Time's Revenges.'

I suggested that 'Time's revenges' would be quite as sure and sweet if Fanny should place the re-lighted oil-lamp outside the door, as otherwise, the few remaining members of the musquito family belonging to Wild Oatland, who were not already in our private apartment, would certainly join their relatives. Now this arrangement was an awkward one for Fanny, and it was some little time before she was satisfactorily arranged; but the time did arrive when, having placed the 'mid-night oil' on the entry-floor, just outside the door, with a pillow on the sill, and most of her 'remains' within our chamber, she pronounced herself, for the first time, at ease in mind, body and estate, And after having assumed an attitude somewhat after Correggio's ‘Magdalen,' but I fear without that lady's improved state of heart, she began to read—not her Bible as Magdalen would have done, but her Browning. I was a passive listener; worn out by the prolonged agony of the 'night attacks,' Robert could not add to my misery; and Fanny's voice, which Will Shakspeare himself would have delighted in, proved to be an emollient lotion to my lacerated nerves. Alas! it did not have that pleasing effect on our vis-a-vis. In the middle of one of R. B.'s most delightful and most muddily mysterious passages, the door opposite slowly opened, and lo! a Woman in White transfixed Fanny's tongue. And thus the vision spake :

'Young lady, I must ask you to withdraw your head to your own room, and close your door and - your mouth. I am an invalid. Sleep with me is every night an improbability; this night you render it an impossibility. Receive my blessing and go to bed.'

She ceased; the door closed, and 'Fanny and I felt - peculiarly.

Very soon, if not sooner than immediately, Mr. Robert Browning, oil-lamp, Fanny, and myself were quite extinguished.

I alone sputtered out a little, and with a sickly bravado spirit, whispered: 'How very impertinent in that Woman in White! Have we not the right to use our door-sill for a pillow if we choose?'

'Of course we have,' answered my friend. 'It's an outrageous piece of imposition. The woman ought to be thankful that we try to cultivate her mind. By the way, how illiterate she must be, and how very infuriating is the fact that to-morrow at breakfast we cannot know which party it is we are called upon to challenge.'

Disgusted with this provoking aspect of the case, we both sank into a sullen silence, which was broken by the following feminine sentiment from the Fanny :

'She had the loveliest Valenciennes-yards and yards on her night-dress!' 'Was her face pretty?' quoth I.

'Face? Oh! I did not notice her face; but she had such a sweet 'Marie Stuart' lace night-cap. I wonder if we shall ever be sufficiently reconciled for me to borrow a pattern?'

At this period, two A.м., exhausted nature had its way; in spite of impertinent neighbors, truculent musquitoes, and uneasy consciences, Fanny and I fell fast asleep. And when 'Aurora, Daughter of the Dawn,' or when Abby Jane, daughter of the Jenkins, rang the breakfast-bell with fiercest energy, as though she fully expected the dead to arise from their beds in order to partake of the Sunday fish-ball, we were yet asleep, and Abby Jane's mis-directed force moved us only to anger,* but not to the Salle am Anger. I, however, 'felt it my duty' to advise Fanny to get up and learn her Sunday-school lesson; but she did not follow it, though judging from the expression which fell from her naughty lips, and from the blasphemous manner in which she answered the first question of the catechism which I kindly and with the best intentions put to her, I was convinced she needed a thorough Sunday-school régime.

As a reward for my missionary labors, this brilliant idea suddenly flashed across the bed-room, namely, that the one who did first Zarifa-like arise and lay her downy pillow down, would have full sweep of the chamber appurtenances. The female who first accomplished this, would secure that reservoir of water the quart pitcher. She could have the entire use of the two towelets and the three window-curtains; she could 'do' her hair at her leisure before that small and stunted and insulting mirror; she would, in fact, have full sway. If such were her fancy, she could be an Othello to the helpless Desdemona, not yet arisen. All the advantages of this brilliant position flashed upon my McClellan sight. I made a 'forward movement,' and had made myself mistress of that pitcher of water before Fanny the haggard realized my ingenious and subtle coup d'état. In faltering accents that unhappy, beautiful

*SALLAMANGER

[g hard, as in anger"]-the dining-room of the Bobtail Hotel, Broadway, any day from March to December, during which time the thermometer there ranges from 110° Fahrenheit up to the ceiling.

Being protested against the tyranny shown in my taking all the water, and to speak in sarcasm, all the towels, all the every thing, for I, the rapacious master, took possession of the closet, where I managed by much crowding and crushing, to insinuate a pair of gloves and a collar. Fanny, showing further signs of discontent, I referred her to the sad but awful history of Mrs. Desdemona, and requesting her silence, pointed to the pillow, and quoting Mr. O'Thello as I once heard him rendered, in a disrespectable but delightful burlesque theatre, I said: 'Now, it's no kinder use of talking, Desdemona, for I will have all the water.' After this fearful threat, Fanny was quiet, and I imagined she had found refuge in sleep —that 'prodigious resource,' as I heard some one call it the other day. She was so very still and peaceful, that I feared for a moment that she had died from fright and musquitoes, and was about to weep for the 'early lost,' (though, to be sure, it was then nearly noon-day,) and to regret that my last words had been words of wrath and bitterness, when 'Mrs. Hemans-and-water,' or some of her tribe, had requested us to 'Speak gently to the ear-ring one.' But at this crisis, I discovered that the maiden was not dead, or sleeping either. She was feigning sleep; but in reality, peeping with one eye, to see how I rolled my hair!

I soon left this wicked schemer to her own devices, and fancy she must have found that 'prodigious resource' a resource indeed, for we did not meet again for several hours. Having had my breakfast - 'the cup which depresses but, alas! does not inebriate,' with some more of the delicious blackberries, more of the 'Amreeta' cream, in fact, ‘lots and lots of it,' I began to feel happy · almost virtuous. 'The cares which infested the night folded their tents like the Arabs, and as silently took their flight,' (Longfellow, slightly altered and improved.) Most of the cares a few skulking fellows did yet haunt the halls of memory and the 'lost to view' were not 'to memory dear.' The joys of that delicious breakfast did not banish from my mind the knowledge that I had 'supped on horrors.' I still loved Fanny, but I felt that love, great as it was, (surpassing the usual love between women,) would not stand the test of sharing the same wash-bowl. Yes, 'I would have died for thee,' O lovely Fanny! but as to giving up half that closet to your use, it could not be. I began to think we could see too much of each other-of each other's wardrobe, at all events; and indeed every person should have a case of their own to retire to, and escape at times from even their dearest friends. Therefore, I repaired to the friendly Jenkins, and without delay secured another 'large double-room,' for my sole and entire use. The Jenkins evidently thought 'Fanny and I' had quarreled—and, indeed, 'not to put too fine a point on it,' I think we did come very near it. Business being attended to, I wandered forth-not to the church, but to divine service. Oh! what a morning it was! and

'I SAW from the beach, where the morning was shining,

A bark on the waters move gloriously on.'

And I had a change of heart' as I stood there, seeing visions such as no priest or churchman could have given me. How long ago had I stood on that very