got up by a set of illiterate parish clerks, and which, in their treatment, were nothing more than blasphemous and ridiculous. Some of these plays, or "Mysteries," as they were called, had for their foundation the creation of the World! and in them a character, personating the Deity, was frequently introduced, conversing with all the distinguished personages in Scriptural history. An amusement so blasphemous and revolting to good taste could not long endure; and, in a short time after, we find the people pursuing the "good old sports," which, we suppose, formed one of the many advantages which a certain class of persons see in an epoch that they lovingly denominate "the good old times." Some time after this, we see James I. writing a work on the Sports and Pastimes of the English, and advocating the cause of such barbarous amusements as bull and bear-bating, cockfighting, &c., a system of national education that was very wisely suppressed by his successor Charles.

Presently, the influence of France, that allpowerful arbiter in trifles, began to exhibit itself in England; the pastimes of the higher classes became of a more elevated order, although still characterized by considerable absurdities. Ladies, instead of going to the Tower to see a combat between a lion and a bear, turned their attention to those allegorical poems called "Masques," which were then becoming fashionable, and which were occasionally performed before the court. There ladies of quality might be seen figuring away as Chloe or Phyllis, holding ivory-handled crooks, and spouting bad pastorals; while the gentlemen, as Corydons, supplicated, in very indifferent couplets, that the cruel fair ones might look more tenderly upon their sorrows.

Modern pastime has partaken of modern progress; and the games that are now creeping into our homes, many of which we owe to our Gallic neighbors, are an agreeable and instructive improvement upon the boisterous pastimes that in former years made the crossbeams of each old English parlor ring with merry laughter. "Hunt the Slipper," "BlindMan's Buff," and "Hanging the Mistletoe" are now supplanted by such games as bouts-rhimes, charades, and definitions. There is an interesting fireside pastime entitled "The Game of Twenty Questions," of which we once remember reading an account in connection with the celebrated statesman Canning. Canning, with a number of friends, all men of intellect, and holding grave offices, was dining at some

one's house whose name has now escaped our memory. After the ladies had retired, and the wine had just begun to circulate, some one proposed that "The Game of Twenty Questions" should be played. The motion was eagerly adopted; and to Canning was allotted the task of discovering the object fixed on by the rest of the party.

Canning conducted his interrogations with all the critical acumen of a lawyer and statesman, weighing, with the most anxious care, each question and its answer, and apparently taking as much pains about his final success as if the matter in question had been the discovery or management of a State secret. The whole of the party exhibited, during the progress of the game, a keen and singular interest; and Canning is described as laboring under a considerable degree of excitement; and, when he had finally exhausted the number of queries allowed by the rules of the game, and had to hazard his only guess, he did it with an agitated and anxious air that was curious to witness in one who was accustomed to decide the destiny of nations. The great statesman was, however, successful; the object fixed on had been the wand of office of the Usher of the Black Rod; and Mr. Canning declared that he had guessed it at an early stage of the proceedings. He had felt convinced what it was, but was afraid of destroying his only chance by guessing too rashly. A singular fact connected with this evening's amusement illustrates in a striking manner what a wholesome influence such pastimes exercise over a family circle. The game on this particular night lasted nearly two hours, during which time not one drop of wine was drunk. This, in a day when after-dinner pleasures were universally enjoyed, is the best commentary upon the advantages that must result from the introduction of fireside games.

LOOK UPWARD.-It is said that the apostles "looked steadfastly towards heaven as He went up." Methinks it is so that we also, as we read or hear this wondrous event, should fix eye and heart upon that heaven which Hethe first-born-has preoccupied, that we should feel that in him a portion of ourselves has departed thither, a sinless type of humanity, which keeps its place for the rest; and that our heart, in Christ, being already there, all else should struggle, with holy impatience, to follow.

THAT Kate Arnold was a rare beauty none could deny; but it was almost impossible to say in what her beauty consisted. The flashing eye, the glowing cheek, the dimpled mouth all mirrored her pure and guileless soul. But it was in the ever-varied expression of her countenance, like the changing tints of the kaleidoscope, that her charms lay. Her face was the index of her heart, open and unsuspecting. The only child of a widowed father, "the child of his old age," she was the idol of his heart. Her endowments of nature were all she possessed, for their means were too limited to admit of her acquiring those various accomplishments now considered so important in female education. The crowning gem of woman's character-piety-she possessed in an eminent degree. In the bloom of youth, ere her heart had become tainted with the atmosphere of a sinful world, she had dedicated herself to the service of that God of whom she had been taught by her sainted mother and her venerated father.

They lived in a small village, on the banks of the "blue Juniata," where Mr. Arnold acted in the humble capacity of teacher in the village school. Of course his revenue was very small. Kate was his affectionate housekeeper, and her buoyant disposition smoothed over the trifling cares" so vexing to most persons. "The path of sorrow" was fast opening to poor Kate's hitherto untried footsteps. Intense application to his duties had injured her father's eyes, which were never very strong, and he began to fear the issue.

66

One evening, as Kate was moving lightly about, preparing her father's supper, and singing blithely as a bird (for she had a most sweet voice, albeit not a cultivated one), she was startled by a sigh which came from the depths of her father's heart. Instantly the song was hushed, and, going to her father, she knelt by his side, and, smoothing his locks, on which the snows of old age were falling fast, she said: "Father, dear, what troubles you? I have always been the sharer of your joys; do let me also share your sorrows.'

"My darling child, my heart is filled with grief; my eyes are failing fast, and I fear that

soon the blackness of darkness' will obscure my vision."

"Oh, think not so, dear father! Cheer up, and let us not anticipate evil.”

"It is only for your sake, my Kate, that I fear. Who will take care of and shelter you, and provide for your sustenance ?"

Kate's face lost its animation as her father spoke thus sadly of their future, and she burst into tears and wept long and unrestrainedly. At length, a gleam of sunshine passed over her face, and with woman's faith she exclaimed: "He who feedeth the ravens, and knoweth when a sparrow falleth to the ground,' will surely protect us from the wintry blasts of poverty."

"Heaven bless you, my daughter! Under the heavy burden which oppresses me, I had well nigh forgotten the source of our many blessings. Let us thank Him for his mercies past, and trust him for the future."

After their frugal meal, Mr. Arnold reverently returned thanks for their many mercies, and after imploring divine protection and guidance in their trying circumstances, the father and daughter separated for the night.

In one night Kate Arnold seemed to have lived a whole existence. Her joyous look had given place to a thoughtful and earnest expression, and a high and noble resolve shone in her eye.

"My dear child," said Mr. Arnold, after the morning greetings were over, "you look as though some important idea were, Minervalike, to spring from your brain."

"I am glad, dear father, to hear that I have even the appearance of brains, as they will be much needed in what I am about to undertake," she answered, playfully; "but, as you truly observe, an important idea has chased 'balmy sleep' from my eyelids. It is, that you relinquish your duties, which are impairing your health and sight, and accept as a substitute Miss Kate Arnold, spinster. Now, do not say nay," seeing he was about to speak, "for, when a woman will, she will.' Should your eyes improve, I will, in turn, accept you as my substitute."

"I cannot bear, Kate, for you, my only one,

to be immured in a school-room day after day, instead of enjoying the sunshine which your youth demands."

"Well, but just try me," urged Kate. "I have weighed the matter well, and if you refuse me I will devise some other means of selfsupport. I will not see you thus wasting away for my sake."

The expression of firmness and determination which lighted up her fine face made her look as one inspired; and so she was-inspired with a filial love which could surmount all obstacles. She obtained her father's consent, after much pleading.

With a light and buoyant step did Kate Arnold bound along the path which led to the village school; and though at first there was some rebellion among the boys at the idea of a woman teaching them, yet her firmness subdued them; and her amiable and loving manners soon won all hearts. Each day found her more and more devoted to the heaven-inspired task; nor did she neglect her manifold duties at home. Her father's heart was bound up in her life. Could we blame him if something like idolatry mingled with his feelings?

Gradually the veil fell over Mr. Arnold's sight, till at length that most precious of all senses was lost to him. Poor Kate! How heavy was the blow! But she knew the finger of her God had closed the vision of her father's orbs, and she murmured, "Not my will, but Thine, be done." It was a touching sight to see the old man leaning upon his beloved child, as they went to the house of God, or to watch them on a summer evening, beneath the jasmine that clambered over the door, as Kate, in her rich, full tones, read to him from the Book of Life.

Two years dragged their monotonous length along, but Kate bore up nobly under her selfimposed duty. At last she began to droop. Her step lost its buoyancy, and the roses on her cheek began to fade. It was well that the blind old man, now in the twilight of his life, knew not that the morning of her life was clouded over. It would have been the bitterest drop in the cup of his sorrow. Her voice to him was as cheerful, her attentions as devoted, as ever, and he dreamed not that the canker was in the heart of the rose.

Mr. Arnold's frame, never very strong, gave way under the inactive life he was leading, and his heavy misfortune preyed upon his mind. His devoted daughter watched, with deepest sorrow, the gradual decay of her father's faculties.

VOL. LVII.-21

One Sabbath, after Kate had read the twentythird Psalm, that heart-touching and yet heartsoothing song of David, they sat for awhile in sad and solemn silence. At length Mr. Arnold said: "Dear Kate, I feel that I must soon tread 'the valley of shadows.' My thoughts lately turn ever upward to that blessed land where 'the weary are at rest.' The scales shall fall from these now sightless orbs, and I shall forever bask in the sunlight of my Saviour's presence. My affliction has proved a 'blessing in disguise,' and the eye of my soul can reach beyond this fleeting life, into that bright and heavenly land where there shall be no more night."

Mr. Arnold spoke with prophetic lips; for in a few days he was taken to his bed, from which he never arose. A gradual "loosing of the silver cord," and the "golden bowl was broken." His last prayer was for his beloved child. Kate was heaven-sustained throughout the trying scene, and when all was over a reaction took place. Like a lily before a storm she drooped. All those deep and tender affections which only a woman's heart possesses were lavished upon her father, and her last and only tie to earth was broken.

A month from the day on which her father breathed his last, Kate Arnold's brief career was closed. Her last words were: "I know in whom I have believed;" and the seraphic smile that illumined her features as her ransomed spirit took its flight, attested the truth of the exclamation.

A simple stone marks the spot where restthe ashes of this devoted father and daughter, with the oft-written, but always beautiful inscription, "They were lovely and pleasant in: their lives, and in death they were not divided."

Is not the mind of childhood the tenderest,. holiest thing this side of Heaven? Is it not to be approached with gentleness, with loveyes, with a heart-worship of the great God from whom, in almost angel innocence, it has proceeded? A creature undefiled by the taint of the world-unvexed by its injustice-unwearied by its hollow pleasures. A being fresh from the source of light, with something of its universal lustre in it? If childhood be this, how holy the duty to see that, in its onward growth, it shall be no other!-to stand as a watcher at the temple, lest any unclean thing. should enter it.

Jor may seem an odd name: it is the short for Jonathan, and some forty years ago was in use in certain parts of Maine, where our family have been settled since the year 1632. My cousin Jot was a younger son of Joseph de Winter, Esquire, who became the head of the family on the decease of my grandfather, old General de Winter, in 1807.

Jot at that time was only sixteen years old; but in certain respects, he was a remarkable youth. In the first place, he stood six feet one inch in his stocking feet, and he weighed two hundred pounds. Having been brought up to severe farm labor, he was remarkably athletic; he could box and wrestle better, jump higher, "dive deeper and come up dryer," than any man in the parish. His literary attainments, having been by attendance about nine weeks each year during the winter months at the town school, were not very remarkable.

In 1812 Jot's father died, and his brother Joe became head of the family and heir to the mansion and farms; it being the custom in the family to give all the land to the oldest son, and put off the younger children with a small legacy each. This has kept the estate together, and my cousin Joe now lives and reigns in the same house where his lineal ancestors have lived and reigned more than two hundred years. Of course the house is old-fashioned. The kitchen fireplace will hold half a cord of wood, and the grand staircase in the front entry contains carved oak enough to furnish many parlors with modern fancy chairs of the spindle-shank pattern. Among the outhouses are two large block-houses, built for defence against the Indians, with jutting-over second stories, and trap-doors and loop-holes for musketry. One of these is now a corn-house, and the other a cider-house, with a cider-mill on the ground-floor. These buildings have a history-have, in the times of the Indian wars, often afforded shelter to many families from the neighboring valleys, who sought the protection of the De Winters in their stronghold on De Winter Hill.

But don't let us lose sight of Cousin Jot. When Jot's father died, he had arrived at the mature age of twenty-one; and, as the poet

says, "when he arrived at man's estate, 'twas all the estate he had." Jot was rather puzzled to know what to do with himself. He found no difficulty in spending the little modicum of money left to him by his father. When he had bought a handsome suit of clothes and a gold watch, and stood treat at half a dozen junketings with the young people of his acquaintance, his money was all gone. Meantime he had pondered and considered a great deal with respect to his future movements, and had arrived at no satisfactory result.

He had no profession, no trade. He could labor as a farm servant on Joe's estate, as he had all his life on his father's; but he did not exactly like the position. Going out west was not the fashion in those days; and neither Texas, nor California, nor Kansas had opened the door to adventurous emigrants.

Fortunately for him, just at this juncture the war of 1812 with Great Britain broke out. Within a few miles of the estate there was a seaport town from which privateers were being fitted out with great activity. Great numbers of men had been thrown out of their usual employments, and the privateering service was popular. Some of Jot's acquaintance had already shipped in the Saucy Jonathan privateer, and Jot, full of patriotism and speculation, resolved to join them. His mother and sisters cried a little, under a mistaken idea that he might get shot or drowned; brother Joe wished him good luck, and secretly thought, very fraternally, that his departure from the neighborhood was a very good riddance; and Jot, with a light heart and a thin pair of pantaloons (the month was August), took his departure from the paternal mansion, marched down to the seaport, and forthwith commenced privateersman.

Jot was as ignorant of seamanship as a cow is of the manual exercise with the musket; but he was very good at repelling boarders with a handspike, and was accustomed to obey orders. Moreover, the greater part of the ship's company were raw landsmen like himself; it being the custom to ship such hands with the calculation that they might be useful in fighting.

But Jot, who had a way of going into things in earnest, soon learned a sailor's duty; and his great strength and activity rendered him sc efficient that he was soon promoted to some petty office among the sailors. He made several cruises in rapid succession; and as the privateer made many captures, he received a considerable amount of prize-money. His intervals of rest were so short, however, that the greater part of the money was left to accumulate in the hands of the owners till the amount was so considerable that he determined, after one more cruise, to give up privateering and employ his capital in trade.

Unluckily for him, in this last cruise the Saucy Jonathan was captured; and Cousin Jot, to his great sorrow and vexation, soon after found himself, with some hundreds more of his countrymen, locked up and guarded by British soldiers, within the dreary walls of Dartmoor prison.

"To think of having all that prize-money at my credit at home-such a mint of money," said Jot, poor fellow—“money that would buy all sorts of luxuries, if I wanted them; and to be obliged to live on this abominable putrid beef and mouldy pilot-bread; to say nothing of being cooped up in these murderous stone walls, with hardly a chance to stretch my legs or knock a fellow down for exercise. It is too bad! It makes a man feel 'wolfish about the head and shoulders.' But never mind; that's the way the world wags. A streak of fat and a streak of lean.' We shall see how it will turn out one of these days. I would like one shy at those blackguards of soldiers, and knock them over the head with their own muskets."

His desire for something like action was gratified when the rebellion among the prisoners, occasioned by their harsh treatment, broke out. But this was speedily quelled; and Jot was obliged to return, with the rest, to their salt beef and pilot-bread; and what was far worse to him, to the dreary days of constrained idleness.

At last peace was proclaimed; the Dartmoor prisoners were released, and Jot came home. Before visiting his friends, however, he called at the counting-room of the owners of the captured Saucy Jonathan, and found some ten thousand dollars passed to his credit. The last cruise had been the most successful of all in captures, and Jot's promotion had stood him in good stead, increasing his proportional share of prize-money.

Great were the rejoicings on Jot's safe return home. Joe received him with great benignity.

Mother and sisters dried their tears, and received, very complacently, certain presents of silk gowns and gold breast-pins, which Jot had purchased and brought along with him. Much hard cider and many mince-pies were used up in the evening, when the neighbors came in to welcome him, and hear about his privateering adventures and his prison life; and Jot, for a whole week afterwards, was the hero of the village, and the pet lion of the evening parties.

On the whole, Jot was rather an ornament to these same evening parties. When his stalwart limbs were arrayed in fine broadcloth, his hair arranged by a skilful barber, and his handsome features lighted up with the flush of success and the smiling air of good-will to his old friends and neighbors, which he now wore, he might be pronounced "a pretty fellow."

So thought the young girls of the village, at any rate. Especially and particularly, so thought Sally Gracie, the prettiest of them all. She had known Jot in the old times, before the war. They had gone to school together, and, for aught I know to the contrary, had learned to spell from the same copy of Noah Webster's Spelling-Book.

But as they grew up, Jot had somehow felt himself removed from the higher sphere of the village beauty; for Jot was poor and proud, and Sally was an heiress. It is true that, as Jot marched out of the village with his bundle slung on a stick over his shoulder, to "go to the wars, "Sally had happened to be standing at her father's front door, and had bidden him a very cordial good-bye, with much handshaking, and, as Jot almost believed, a blush and a tear.

"But," thought Jot, "even if she cares at all about such a poor fellow as I, the thing won't do. Old Gracie is the greatest skinflint in the county, and as rich as a Jew. empty pockets I would not court her if I could, and I could not court her if I would."

With

Still, when the wind was blowing great guns at sea, or whistling round the dreary walls of Dartmoor prison, he had often caught himself saying, "I wonder if Sally Gracie would have a good crying spell if she should hear of my death?"

Now that he was returned with money in both pockets, he thought that he might venture to pay her a little attention. When he found that his attentions were graciously received by Sally, and even that old Gracie himself encouraged his visits to the Gracie mansion, poor Jot fell incontinently over head and