I've been gathering some of the most delicious strawberries, for I know you are fond of them, and we have such excellent cream, - and everything is so sweet and still here! O!" said she, putting her arm within his, and looking up brightly in his face, oh, we shall be so happy!"

66

15. Poor Leslie was overcome. He caught her to his bosom, he folded his arms around her, he kissed her again and again; he could not speak, but the tears gushed into his eyes; and he has often assured me, that, though the world has since gone prosperously with him, and his life has, indeed, been a happy one, yet never has he experienced a moment of more exquisite felicity.

LESSON XIV.

Advice of Polonius to his son Laertes.

т

1. My blessing with you;

And these few precepts in thy memory
Look thou character.* Give thy thoughts no tongue,
Nor any unproportioned thought hist act.
Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar.
The friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hooks of steel;
But do not dull thy palm ‡ with entertainment
Of each new-hatched, unfledged comrade. Beware
Of entrance to a quarrel; but, being in,
Bear it that the opposer may beware of thee.
Give every man thy ear, but few thy voice;
Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgment.
2. Costly thy habit as thy purse can buy,

SHAKSPEARE.

This is the imperative mood of the verb character, signifying to engrave, or describe in characters.

Shakspeare often personifies inanimate objects, applying the masculine and feminine pronouns to them, as if they were persons. In this sentence thought is the antecedent of the pronoun his.

The literal meaning of this expression is, Do not make the palm of thy hand callous by shaking every man by the hand. The figurative meaning, as Dr. Johnson says, may be, Do not, by promiscuous conversation, make thy mind insensible to the difference of character.

This advice, it must be recollected, was given by a nobleman to his son; and should be taken with considerable qualification in other cases. Even old Polonius himself would not have recommended a large tailor's bill, without the means of liquidating it. Every one, however, who has

But not expressed in fancy; rich, not gaudy;
For the apparel oft proclaims the man;
And they in France, of the best rank and station
Are most select, and generous chief, in that.
Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,
And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.
This above all: to thine own self be true;
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell! my blessings season* this in you.

LESSON XV.

Language and Dress. O. W. HOLMES.

LANGUAGE.

1. SOME words on Language may be well applied
And take them kindly, though they touch your pride.
Words lead to things; a scale is more precise,
Coarse speech, bad grammar, swearing, drinking, vice.
Our cold North-easter's icy fetter clips

The native freedom of the Saxon lips;
See the brown peasant of the plastic South,
How all his passions play about his mouth!
With us, the feature that transmits the soul,
A frozen, passive, palsied breathing-hole.

2. The crampy shackles of the ploughboy's walk
Tie the small muscles, when he strives to talk;
Not all the pumice of the polished town
Can smooth this roughness of the barnyard down;
Rich, honored, titled, he betrays his race

―――

By this one mark, - he 's awkward in the face ;-
Nature's rude impress, long before he knew
The sunny street that holds the sifted few.

a proper regard to personal appearance will confess that the cheapest dresses are not always the most economical; and it is perhaps questionable, whether it is not the duty of the rich to patronize industry by the consumption of those articles which encourage human labor, when they can do so without neglecting other duties.

*"Season."- The meaning of this expression is to fix it in the mind in such a manner that it will never wear out.

3. It can't be helped, though, if we 're taken young,
We gain some freedom of the lips and tongue;
But school and college often try in vain
To break the padlock of our boyhood's chain;
One stubborn word will prove this axiom true
No late-caught rustic can enunciate view.*

4. A few brief stanzas may be well employed
To speak of errors we can all avoid.
Learning condemns beyond the reach of hope
The careless churl that speaks of soap for soap;
Her edict exiles from her fair abode

The clownish voice that utters road for road;
Less stern to him who calls his coat a coat,
And steers his boat believing it a boat.
She pardoned one, our classic city's boast,
Who said, at Cambridge, most instead of most;
But knit her brows, and stamped her angry foot,
To hear a teacher call a root a root.

5. Once more speak clearly, if you speak at all;
Carve every word before you let it fall;
Don't, like a lecturer or dramatic star,
Try over hard to roll the British R;

Do put your accents in the proper spot;
Don't, let me beg you, don't say "How?" for "What?"
And when you stick on conversation's burs,
Don't strew the pathway with those dreadful urs.†

DRESS.

6. From little matters let us pass to less,
And lightly touch the mysteries of Dress;
The o ward forms the inner man reveal,-
We guess the pulp before we cut the peel.
I leave the broadcloth, coats and all the rest, -
The dangerous waistcoat, called by cockneys "vest,"

J

*The poet here humorously alludes to the difficulty which many persons, bred in retirement, find in pronouncing this word correctly. It will be difficult to express in letters the manner in which it is frequently mispronounced, but it is a sound somewhat similar to voo. The proper pronunciation is vu or ve-ew. They also who give the short sound of o in the words soap, road, coat, bōat, mōst, and root, come in for a small share of his lash.

+ The drawling style in which many persons are in the habit of talk ing, heedlessly hesitating to think of a word, and the meanwhile supplying its place by the unmeaning syllable "ur," is here happily condemned. Such habits may easily be corrected by a little presence of mind, and particularly by following the direction, Think twice before you speak once.

,,

The things named "pants" in certain documents, -
A word not made for gentlemen, but "gents;
One single precept might the whole condense :
Be sure your tailor is a man of sense;
But add a little care, a decent pride,
And always err upon the sober side.

7. Three pairs of boots one pair of feet demands,
If polished daily by the owner's hands;
If the dark menial's visit save from this,
Have twice the number, for he 'll sometimes miss.
One pair for critics of the nicer sex,
Close in the instep's clinging circumflex,
Long, narrow, light; the Gallic* boot of love,
A kind of cross between a boot and glove.
But, not to tread on everlasting thorns,
And sow in suffering what is reaped in corns,
Compact, but easy, strong, substantial, square,
Let native art compile the medium pair.

8. The third remains; and let your tasteful skill
Here show some relics of affection still;
Let no stiff cowhide, reeking from the tan,
No rough caoutchouc,† no deformed brogan,‡
Disgrace the tapering outline of your feet,
Though yellow torrents gurgle through the street;
But the patched calfskin § arm against the flood
In neat light shoes, impervious to the mud.

9. Wear seemly gloves; not black, nor yet too light,
And least of all the pair that once was white;
Let the dead party where you told your loves
Bury in peace its dead bouquets and gloves;
Shave like the goat, if so your fancy bids,
But be a parent, don't neglect your kids.||
10. Have a good hat; the secret of your
Lives with the beaver in Canadian brooks;
Virtue may flourish in an old cravat,
But man and nature scorn the shocking hat.

looks

The French boot, which, from its peculiar shape and lightness, gives the foot ease, while it displays the arched form of the foot.

+ India rubber.

Brogan is derived from the Irish. It is a thick shoe, or rather something between a shoe and a boot.

$ By the patched calfskin is here meant either the old calfskin boot which has been patched, or, perhaps, the "goloeshoe" or overshoe, which resembles a patched shoe.

| Kid gloves.

Does beauty slight you from her bright abodes?
Like old Apollo, you must take to Rhoades,*
Mount the new castor, ice itself will melt;
Boots, gloves may fail; the hat is always felt!
11. Be shy of breastpins; plain, well-ironed white,
With small pearl buttons, -two of them in sight,-
Is always genuine, while your gems may pass,
Though real diamonds, for ignoble glass.
But spurn those paltry cis-Atlantic lies,
That round his breast the shabby rustic ties;
Breathe not the name, profaned to hallow things
The indignant laundress blushes when she brings ! †

*

*

*

*

*

12. The stately neck is manhood's manliest part;
It takes the life-blood freshest from the heart;
With short, curled ringlets close around it spread,
How light and strong it lifts the Grecian head!

*

*

*

*

*

13. I spare the contrast; it were only kind
To be a little, nay, intensely blind:
Choose for yourself: I know it cuts your ear;
I know the points will sometimes interfere;
I know that often, like the filial John,§
Whom sleep surprised with half his drapery on,
You show your features to the astonished town
With one side standing and the other down;

14. But, oh my friend! my favorite fellow-man!
If nature made you on her modern plan,
Sooner than wander with your windpipe bare,
The fruit of Eden | ripening in the air,

* The name of a vender of fashionable hats, in the city where the poem from which this piece is an extract was delivered. To understand the witticism in the next couplet, the reader will recollect that felt is a substance composed of wool, or wool and hair, matted together to form the body of a hat.

"My son John," who
"Went to bed with his breeches on,
One stocking off and one stocking on."

+ The poet here alludes to parts of dress which have as yet found no name in our dictionaries. The false bosom and shirt-collar, vulgarly called "a dickey," have as yet (thanks to the cleanly spirit of literature) found no favor with the lexicographer.

The shirt-collar, which, when not properly proportioned, cuts the ear, or the points of which will not allow free motion to the face.

S The witty poet here alludes to one of Mother Goose's melodies. The filial John is

There is a protuberance in the fore part of the throat, occasioned by the projection of a cartilage, to which the name of "Adam's apple"