"Ah! here they are," exclaimed Mr. Lennox. "Come, young gentlemen, you're just in time." "How many people have you shot with those horrid things?" said Mrs. Lennox.

66

Nobody but our mark," answered Frank, a young lieutenant just graduated from West Point, "and I think we rather touched that once or twice--didn't we, Harry?"

"Which is the best marksman?" asked Mr. Lennox.

"I am," said Harry; "but Frank comes on famously."

"What are you going to do on your birthday, Harry?" inquired his father. "It's next Thursday, isn't it? and you're one-and-twenty, I believe."

"I haven't formed any projects, sir," replied Harry.

I hope you're going to give us some sort of a celebration on the occasion, father?" said Mary, laughing.

"I think birthdays ought to be kept in a quiet way," said Mrs. Lennox, "and young people should make their first entrance into the world with reflection and gravity."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Mr. Lennox: "why gravity? There are occasions enough for gravity when we can't help it. On the contrary, let's have some friends to dinner, and in the evening a ball."

"I was going to propose a trip to Rose Hill," said Mary. "We might ask the Eltons, and one or two others, and make a pleasant family party-a sort of picnic."

"What say you, Harry?" asked his father. "You are the hero of the day."

THE NOVEL NEWSPAPER.-No. 348.

"Upon my word, sir," said Harry, "I have not even formed a wish on the subject." "If there is going to be a celebration," said Frank, "I prefer Rose Hill."

"So I thought," remarked Mary, laughing. "So should I," said Harry. "At a ball, I suppose I should be metamorphosed into a sort of lion, and I fear I should feel more like Bottom the weaver than the noble animal himself."

"That's right, Harry," observed his mother; "be modest, my son."

"But, now I think of it," said Mr. Lennox, "I can't very well leave town on Thursday: I have an engagement."

"If you mean the affair of Brinsley, I can attend to that, I think," said Harry,

"And you," replied his mother, "how can you then join the party?"

"Oh, I don't mind. I shall rather prefer to stay in town."

"Well, that is one way to celebrate one's birthday, to be sure," said Frank, laughing.

Harry is so odd," exclaimed Mary. "I believe he really dislikes to be with his own family. He's all day at his business, and all the evening at political meetings, or clubs, or the theatre, or heaven knows where! He don't dine at home half the time, and when he does--"

"Young men will be young men," said his father; "nothing is gained by curbing and advising them; though, to say the truth, Harry, you have been rather erratic in your way of life lately."

"I'm sorry you think so, sir; but you often say men want not only severe application, but a knowledge of life."

"Certainly, my dear boy, certainly; you are quite your own master. As to Rose Hill, we shall be obliged to give that up for Thursday. I'm sorry, too, with this magnificent weather. But I'll make another proposition, which I hope won't shock your mother's sense of gravity.

We'll have no celebration at all, but a quiet family dinner, with your uncle and aunt Henderson, and go in the evening to the theatre and hear Horn."

"I should like that better," said Mrs. Lennox. "And I," echoed all.

"Good; it is so decreed, then," said Lennox. "And, father," said Mary, "we'll ask the Eltous to dine, and take them with us. What say you, Frank ?"

"Who! I" exclaimed Frank. "Oh, certainly. Anything for a quiet house-anybody. It's quite the same to me."

"Oh, you hypocrite!" said Mary. "You've no preference for Mrs. Elton! certainly not!" "What do you mean by that, Mary?" asked Frank.

"And why not Mrs. Elton ?" said Mr. Lennox. "She is a very charming lady; a gay, amiable, excellent, and very handsome woman; a little eloquent, perhaps; but I like her because she has a heart. Mrs. Elton is one of my beauties, although she is fifty."

Why, so are you fifty, father," said Mary, laughing, "for the matter of that."

"Don't mention it, I beg," cried Mr. Lennox. "I don't believe it. It's too ridiculous! Why, I don't feel a bit older than I did when your too susceptible mamma first fell furiously in love with me."

"Nonsense! Not a bit wiser!" said his wife. "Wisdom? A fig for wisdom! What is it but caution and cunning, after all? What do we live for? Happiness. Thank Heaven, I've enjoyed it, and I shall leave it within the reach of my children. Let the unfortunate study wisdom; but for me, true wisdom is to enjoy. And yet fifty! I really can't believe it."

"It is nevertheless so," said Mrs. Lennox. "And there's Frank, a man, with a pair of, I must say, very impudent-looking whiskers, and a commission in the army. Here's Mary, a tall woman already; and as for Harry, he's actually growing old and serious. Ah, my children! you little know how short life is to those who look back."

"Very true!" observed Lennox, intending to be grave, but failing in such a droll way as to make every one smile. "It seems but yesterday when I used to think a man of fifty a regular old codger, done with life, gouty, with a cracked voice, gold-headed cane, and a brown wig; and yet now, although arrived fairly at that awful age, I still feel myself the same wild, good-for-nothing young dog as ever."

"And I don't see any particular difference in you either," said his wife, looking at him half reproachfully, half affectionately, "only you've grown rather younger and wilder."

cessary for the morrow. I've taken the world as it came, and not striven for what it did not give me. Do you suppose that, had I pleased, I could not have been as great as any of them? Couldn't I have shone at the bar, and shaken the senate? To be sure I could. But I disdained it. Fortune made me rich, and my own good sense kept me happy; and, if that is not the true wisdom, I should like to know what is."

"To do you justice," said Mrs. Lennox, with a smile, "when you came to visit me-let me see! five-and-twenty years ago-you certainly were much graver and more sensible than you are now. I never saw such a gentle, lowspoken, modest person. If I could have known what a hair-brained young madcap you would turn out at fifty, I shouldn't have had you!"

This was received with renewed laughter by the happy family circle.

"And how they have gone, those five-andtwenty years!" added Mrs. Lennox. "And I wonder where we shall all be five-and-twenty years hence."

a

"Be? why here," replied Mr. Lennox; "; little changed or so, but just here, Mary, looking very much what you are now. Frank commander-in-chief, with his eyebrows and whiskers a little more bushy (if possible), and Harry a senator, or Secretary of State, perhaps, for he hasn't unfolded yet any actual designs on the presidential chair."

"How can you speak so lightly of such solemn things?" said Mrs. Lennox. "How can you close your eyes to the possibility of a very different picture?"

"I tell you what, madam," said her husband, gaily, "I'll thank you to give us none of your wisdom. If you choose to go, why that's your affair: I don't; on the contrary, I mean to stay, and I don't think I need despair of providing myself with another helpmate. I know twenty fine women at this moment who would take me, and say Thank you, sir!'"

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it," replied his wife, laughing at a reckless good-humour, to which she was too well accustomed to misunderstand it, and looking at him with an admiration which the five-and-twenty years aforesaid, whatever other revolutions they might have effected, had not changed.

"Nor I," said he, elevating his chin a little, throwing back his shoulders into something of an attitude, and with a glance into a large mirror opposite, which was intended to pass for affectation, but in which, nevertheless, was no want of a little real vanity. "I think I'm tolerably well preserved! Hair-a touch of gray, perhaps; complexion-a little richer than falls to the lot of inexperienced youth; a line or two in the face, here and there, only visible in the daylight; and, in fact, altogether-"

"Pray take a warm cake, sir," interrupted

To say the truth, Mr. Lennox was a very handsome man. His once dark hair was not the less luxuriant or becomingly disposed, from the very general and decided change of colour which he was pleased to denominate a "touch of gray." His complexion showed the natural effect of a long course of good living, in a gentlemanly ruddiness which scarcely detracted from his good looks. His person was tall, wellformed, and dignified; his voice manly and pleasing, his eyes fine, and his manners particularly fascinating. In short, he was one of those persons whose appearance and address remind you of a duke or a prince, before you have time to reflect that dukes and princes are, by nature, no handsomer than other men. The benevolence, good humour, and esprit of his character discovered themselves in all he did and said, and the sort of thoughtlessness, which might appear startling in any other man of his age, threw around him only an air of originality. "To come back to Mrs. Elton, however," said he, while he arranged upon his plate, and duly provided with pepper and salt, a piece of fresh, boiled shad (an exquisite delicacy, peculiar, we believe, to the United States, and some of the rivers of Spain), "if I should be under the necessity of seeking a new helpmate, which, nevertheless, I hope won't be the case, Katy my dear, it wouldn't be the old lady I should make up to, by any manner of means. She has rather too redundant a flow of conversation for my quiet and retiring disposition. I should carry the war into another quarter."

"And, pray, who would it be, father?" inquired Mary. "Whom would you give me for

a second mamma ?"

"Why, that little witch Fanny, to be sure." Mary and her mother here interchanged glances, and laughed with a significance which appeared, as Othello says, to “mean something." "What are you laughing at, miss ?" demanded her father.

"Oh, nothing, sir!" answered Mary, laughing still more.

"Come, now, I insist upon knowing." "Why, only," said Mrs. Lennox, "if you have any serious intentions that way, your pride may have a fall."

"What do you mean?"

"You stand some chance of being ratherrather-"

"Rather what?"

"Rather cut out, father," said Mary. "What! Fanny Elton?" exclaimed Mr. Lennox, evidently surprised. "Is it possible? And who is the fellow, pray?"

A glance, full of good-natured mischief, which Mary cast towards Frank, appeared to throw some light on the mystery. Frank returned it with a look of great indignation, but at the same time coloured obviously.

"What! the lieutenant ?" cried Mr. Lennox.

"Hoity toity! what a grand speech !” rejoined his father.

"Your indignation," said Mrs. Lennox, "reminds me, Frank, of the first time you ever put on a long-tailed coat. Mary had been teazing him all day about it, for she is a shameful teaze, and at last capped the climax by speaking of it to some ladies who were paying me a visit. I shall never forget how Frank drew himself up, in his grand way, and said, 'Mary's a mere child, and is always endeavouring to attract attention to every passing circumstance!' Poor Frank!"

"Frank's famous for making memorable speeches," said Mary, while all were laughing heartily except the object of the merriment. "Do you remember what he once told me about reading history? I had asked him some question concerning one of the personages in Hume, whom he could not remember till I related several events of his life. Oh,' said he, when I read history, I always skip the names and dates!'"

"I hope you have not skipped Miss Elton's first meeting? Hey! you young dog?" name," said his father, "and the date of your

Upon my word, it's quite ridiculous," replied Frank, amid the general smiles which these youthful anecdotes had provoked; "I'm sure I might skip Miss Elton herself altogether, for all the trnth there is in Mary's accusation. She may be a very decent sort of girl-I've no doubt she is; but as for-in respect to-so far from there being any danger of—"

"Hold your tongue, sir?" cried his father. "How dare you have the impertinence to speak in that way of the loveliest little being that ever grew off a rosebush? If that young lady, sir, has deigned to honour you with an instant's attention-if you've received so much as an accidental look from her, and not gone crazy, you young scoundrel, you're no son of mine."

"You're rather hard upon Frank," said Harry. "He cannot publicly acknowledge a hope without also intimating that such a hope has some foundation. Frank is not only not one of those who would not boast of favours not received, but he would even not boast of favours received."

"Well, really, Harry," said his mother, laughing heartily, "it seems to me you are almost as