culations regarding the annual family demand for pepper and salt cassimere; and, moreover, if the mind might yield fond credence to T. Mixer as a representative of Briggs's mamma's opinions, given that lady great solicitude from being an indication of the "tuberculous diathesis." "If I've got to have that," said Briggs, "I'd rather stay short-what is it?" I confessed my ignorance, and advised him to ask Barker, in which I did him an unintentional unkindness, that worthy inviting him to examine the dictionary, which might have suggested itself in the first instance, and assisting him to fix it in his mind by writing it on a slate three hundred times after school-hours.

In spite of all (I am not sure but this may be a mixture of metaphors), Briggs's legs turned a deaf ear to parental remonstrance, his upper frame at the same time filling out to a degree which, taken in connection with the stern simplicity of Barker's table, was a corroboration of the nutritive properties of oxygen which must have satisfied the most sceptical physiologist. By the season that we were both fifteen, he lacked but an inch of the five feet six on which I prided myself; and six months after, when I began to talk of going to college, he was quite up to me, and, but for a certain unmistakable air of never having any pocket-money, one of the wholesomest-looking boys in school.

It was about this latter period, that an astonishing innovation was introduced at Barker's. The two Misses Moodle came to establish a young ladies' seminary in the village of Mungerville, on whose outskirts our own school was situated, bringing along with them, as the

county paper stated, "that charming atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality in which they ever moved”; and, what was of more consequence, a capital of twenty girls to start with. Professional politeness inspired Mr. Barker to make a call on the fair strangers, which the personal fascinations of the younger Miss Moodle induced him to repeat. The atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality gradually acted on him in the nature of an intoxicating gas, until at length, after twenty-five years. of successfully intrenched widowhood, he laid his heart in the mits of the younger Miss Moodle, and they two became one Barker.

As a consequence of this union, social relations began to be established between the two schools. Mrs. Barker, of an occasional evening, wished to run down and visit her sister. If Mr. Barker was engaged in quarrying a page of Cicero out of some stony boy in whom nature had never made any Latin deposit, or had just put a fresh batch of offenders into the penal oven of untimely bed, and felt compelled to run up now and then to keep up the fire under them, by a harrowing description of the way their parents would feel if they knew of their behavior, an instrument dear to Mr. Barker as a favorite poker to a boss-baker in love with his profession,

then, after a clucking noise, indicative of how much he would like to chuck her under the chin, but for the presence of company, Mr. Barker would coo to Mrs. Barker, "Lovey, your pick, sweet!" waving his hand comprehensively over the whole school-room; or, "Dear, suppose we say Briggs, or Chunks, or Thirlwall," as the case might be. The only difficulty about Briggs was

clothes. That used to be obviated by a selection from the trunks of intimate friends; and Briggs was such a nice boy, that it was a real gratification to see him with your best jacket on. Many 's the time the old fellow has said to Chunks or me, "What a blessing that I grew! If I had n't, how could I ever wear your trousers?" In process of time these occasional visits, as escort to Mrs. Barker, expanded into an attendance of all the older boys (when not in bed for moral baking purposes) upon a series of bi-monthly soirées, given by the remaining Miss Moodle, with a superficial view to her pupils' attainment of ease in society; and a material substratum of sandwiches, which Miss Moodle preferred to see, through the atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality, as a simple repast." To this was occasionally added a refreshment, which I have seen elsewhere only at Sunday-school picnics, a mild tap of slightly sweetened water, which tasted as if lemons had formerly been kept in the pail it was made in;-only for Sunday schools they make it strong at the outset, and add water during the hymns, with a vague, but praiseworthy expectation that, in view of the sacredness of the occasion, there will be some miraculous interposition, as in the case of the widow's cruse, to keep the beverage up to proof; while Miss Moodle's liquor preserved throughout the evening a weakness of which generous natures scorned to take advantage beyond the first tumbler.

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At this portion of my career I was dawned upon by Miss Tucker. From mature years, I look back with a shudder upon the number of parchmenty sandwiches which I ate, the reservoirs of lemony water which I

drank, in order to be in that lovely creature's society. I experienced agonies in thinking how much longer it might be before I got a coat with tails, when I calculated how soon she would be putting up her back hair. Her eyes were as blue as I was when I thought she liked Briggs; and she had a complexion compared with which strawberries and cream were nowhere. When she was sent to the piano, to show people what the Moodle system could do in the way of a musical education, I fell into a cataleptic state, and floated off upon a flood of harmony. Miss Moodle and her mits, self and lemon kids, even the sleepless eye of Barker, watching for an indiscretion, upon the strength of which he might defensibly send somebody to bed the next Saturday afternoon, all vanished from before me, swallowed up in a mild glory, which contained but two objects, an angel with low neck and short sleeves, and an insensate hippopotamus of a piano, which did not wriggle all over with ecstasy when her white fingers tickled him. At such moments, I would gladly have gone down on all fours, and had a key-board mortised into my side at any expense of personal torture, if Miss Tucker could only have played a piece on me, and herself been conscious of the chords she was awakening inside my jacket. I loved her to that degree that my hair never seemed brushed enough when I beheld her; and I quite spoiled the shape of my best boots through an elevation of the instep, caused by putting a rolled-up pair of stockings inside each heel, to approximate the manly stature at our bi-monthly meetings. Even her friend, Miss Crickey, a mealy-faced little girl, with saffron hair, who had been pushed by

Miss Moodle so far into the higher branches, that she had a look of being perpetually frightened to death with the expectation of hearing them crack and let her down from a great height, seemed beautiful to me from the mere fact of daily breathing the same air with such an angel, sharing her licorice-stick, and borrowing her sweet little thimble.

I had other reasons for prejudice in Miss Crickey's favor. She was the only person to whom I could talk freely regarding the depth of my passion for Miss Tucker. Not even to the object of that tremendous feeling could I utter a syllable which seemed in any way adequate. With an overpowering consciousness how ridiculous it was, and not only so, but how far from original, I could give her papers of lemon Jackson-balls, hinting simultaneously that, though plump as her cheeks, they were not half so sweet; and through a figure, whose correct name I have since learned to be periphrasis, I could suggest how much my soul yearned to expire on her ruby lips, by asking if she had ever played door-keeper; regretting that the atmosphere of refinement and intellectuality did not admit of that healthful recreation at Moodle's, and begging her to guess whom I would call out if I were door-keeper myself. When she opened her blue eyes innocently, and said, "Miss Crickey? the intimation was rejected with a melancholy dissatisfaction, which would have been disdain but for the character of my feelings to its source. And when, on my pressing

her for the name of the favored mortal whom she would call out if she were door-keeper, she slyly dropped her eyes and asked if Briggs sounded anything like