conquerers. The young woman who forms her estimate of manner and moral worth in a lover, by what she usually sees in most of those who may seek to win her regard in such hunting-grounds, will often find the prize of little value and if our own observations do not greatly mislead us, the young man who desires to improve his manners and elevate his social condition, will find his object greatly facilitated by seeking it in the quiet domestic circle rather than in the hotel or the club-house.

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SKETCHES OF A WESTERN STUDENT'S LIFE.

MY FIRST CASE-THE POISONER-A DEMON.

THE sunshine of September is the softest, the brightest, the purest in the year. Spring has passed, her blossoms and flowers have faded; fruit has come on the trees, grass is gathered to the barn, the wheat is garnered, and all nature's bounties hasten to a shelter, except the slow, majestic corn crop, before the mellowing suns of September come to us. Away off on the hill-side, as the eye wanders in the distance, the rich yellow and deep red maple leaf paints the forest with the bright hues of autumn. Nature is not yet dying, but ripening; the leaf is not yet dead, but is full of life; it has gathered up all its beauties, to give one full vigorous bloom before it dies. When the leaves begin to fall, melancholy begins to brood over the spirit; our songs are all sad ones; the voice has mellow tones, soft, sorrowful, but joyous. In the spring-time we shout with excitement ; in summer we are silent, brooding in thought over the gestation of nature; then the full maturity of autumn comes, and our soul swells with emotions we cannot describe it is a deep and intense joy; but we still feel lonely, and dread the approach of winter as a cold-hearted destroyer; flower, leaf, fruit, stem-all fade, wither, die, in his cold, cheerless death-embrace. Spring is the season of the affections; it is hard to be selfish in spring-time: nature is so full of sympathy, of gushing life, of generous colors, and many-tinted flowers, that the heart grows warm, and swells and beats,

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and pants with a new life, which seeks instinctively to dif fuse itself into all things that have life.

I would like to die in the autumn of life, say turned of fifty, and in the month of September, when the grand old forests are in the "sere and yellow leaf," when the light is soft, the winds are still, when the twilight is coming, and the soft, still breeze sighs over the placid lake, where I hope and pray that my eyes may be closed, gazing on the water. One friend I would like to be with me and only one, and that a friend who has never deceived me. The music of a violin I should crave at such a moment; it is the first music that I ever loved; it will be the last. My mother's voice would be sweeter, but its tones were hushed in death before I could remember them, and now they do not return to me -I cannot recall them.

I had lived all summer with an elderly lady, near a small brook, skirted with willows, beside which I used to lie and pore over Bell, Richerand, Gregory and Thomas, shaded from the sun by a large black birch and two friendly maples. Here summer had passed, her fruits had ripened, and autumn had come, with her fading leaves, tinkling sounds, and wild murmurs. Nobody felt any interest in the poor student; his pale face and scanty wardrobe were forbidding at least they attracted no one.

Towards the close of August, '38, the school-children had wandered into the thick shade beside the low stream that ran through the meadow. Among them was a slim, rawboned, cross-eyed, dark-haired vixen, about twelve years old; she always went bare-foot and bare-headed; her long, coarse hair streamed in the wind, and her sinister look was always a presage of evil. She was regarded by the country people as a pup of the devil, and hated by every one who knew her. One day she collected around her six young girls, from six to ten years old, and having dug from the ground some conium maculatum (poison muskrat root), and

washed it in the brook, she persuaded the children to eat it, by first tasting it herself, and adroitly spitting it out. The neighborhood was soon in an uproar, for the children began to show signs of poison. My preceptor was gone to a wedding, and death seemed impending over the whole group. Sulphate of zinc (white vitriol) is one of the quickest emetics, but in the fright I could find none, and no time was to be lost, and I resolved on trying the power of milk and oil, in such quantities as to produce vomiting. With these and the aid of some good ladies, I succeeded in vomiting five; from the stomachs of three of them, large pieces of the deadly root were ejected. Milk and warm lard, melted, were then again used most freely, and served to protect the coats of the stomach against the effects of the poison. The five were saved. But not so with the sixth, a little sister of the witch who had, apparently by a kind of Satanic intuition, given the poisonous weed to the children. Her sister had received a large dose into her stomach, and started for home with her destroyer, who ran from her in terrible fright when she found that she was having convulsions. When the others were relieved, I started in pursuit of the little girls, and found the poisoned one lying in the road, a mile from home, in violent spasms. With the little sufferer in my arms, I walked rapidly to a log dwelling, some eighty rods from the road. She passed from one convulsion into another with great rapidity, and all efforts to vomit her were unavailing: the fatal poison had entered the nervous system, and was hastening to extinguish the life of the little sufferer. The first symptoms of approaching death were seen on the skin, in the form of dark, maculated spots, which changed quickly to a lighter hue; then the remainder of the skin passed from a pale white to a leaden hue, and then a sudden quivering of the whole body, especially the extremities; the muscles of the mouth were drawn from side to side, and the eyes opened widely and rolled in a

rapid circular motion, till the whole aspect of the child was hideous beyond description. Death closed the scene, but not my remembrance of the horrid sufferings of the little victim. When the helpless child dropped down in the road, the elder sister fled for home and disappeared from sight, and after a long search, we found her in the granary, astride of an old flax-brake, her grey wild eyes flashing terror, and her raven locks hanging wildly around her face. We asked her why she gave the poison to the children. She replied that she did not know; that she gave it to her sister first, and then the other children consented to eat it. Her face was a picture of demonism; she alternately laughed, and cried, and howled.

Ten years afterwards, when visiting the place, I met the funeral procession of a young mother and her first child. I wandered into the crowd at the grave; and, as is usual in new places, the corpse was shown for a last time, just before consigning it to the narrow house. On looking upon the face, I recognized the features of the juvenile hag upon the flax-brake; her hair yet black and glossy, and parted across her contracted skinny brow. Her infant lay on one arm, sleeping its eternal sleep. The adventure with the poisoned children came over me with a chilling shudder, and I thanked God that the dead one before me had not left her likeness on the earth. That she deliberately gave the fatal dose to the children I never had a doubt; but I have wept over her case in pity, for her evil was born in her. She died of consumption, caused by a scrofulous taint in her blood; and I give my explanation of some of the consequences of scrofula, for the benefit of those who read this tale, and as a contribution of my small mite to throw back the accursed idiotic lie, that diseases are caused by the mysteri ous providence of God! No! it is our contempt for God's laws.

The effect of scrofula on all who inherit it seems to