passed before him. What a spectacle did they present! The cavalry, most of them dismounted, were mingled with the infantry, who dragged their feeble limbs along with difficulty; their shattered mail and tattered garments dripping with the salt ooze, showing through their rents many a bruise and ghastly wound; their bright arms soiled, their proud crests and banners gone, the baggage, artillery — all, in short, that constitutes the pride and panoply" of glorious war-forever lost. Cortés, as he looked wistfully on their thin and disor-10 dered ranks, sought in vain for many a familiar face, and missed more than one dear companion who had stood side by side with him through all the perils of the conquest. Though accustomed to control his emotions, or, at least, to conceal them, the sight was too much for him. He covered his face with his hands, and the tears which trickled down too plainly showed the anguish of his soul.

"WHO stuffed that white owl?" No one spoke in the shop;

The barber was busy, and he couldn't stop;

The customers, waiting their turns, were all reading
The Daily, the Herald, the Post, little heeding
The young man who blurted out such a blunt question;
Not one raised a head, or even made a suggestion;
And the barber kept on shaving.

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"Don't you see, Mister Brown,"
Cried the youth, with a frown,
"How wrong the whole thing is,
How preposterous' each wing is,

How flattened the head is, how jammed down the neck. is

In short, the whole owl, what an ignorant wreck 'tis? I make no apology3;

I've learned owl-eology,

I've passed days and nights in a hundred collections, 10 And cannot be blinded to any deflections

Arising from unskillful fingers that fail

To stuff a bird right, from his beak to his tail.
Mister Brown! Mister Brown!

Do take that bird down,

Or you'll soon be the laughingstock all over town!" And the barber kept on shaving.

"I've studied owls,

And other night fowls,

And I tell you

What I know to be true:

An owl cannot roost

With his limbs so unloosed;
No owl in this world
Ever had his claws curled,
Ever had his legs slanted,
Ever had his bill canted,
Ever had his neck screwed
Into that attitude.

He can't do it, because

'Tis against all bird laws.

Anatomy teaches,

Ornithology preaches,

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An owl has a toe

That can't turn out so!

I've made the white owl my study for years,

And to see such a job almost moves me to tears!
Mister Brown, I'm amazed

You should be so gone crazed

As to put up a bird

In that posture absurd!

To look at that owl really brings on a dizziness;

The man who stuffed him don't half know his business !" ic

And the barber kept on shaving.

Stuck up there so stiff like a side of coarse leather.
In fact, about him there's not one natural feather."
Just then, with a wink and a sly normal lurch,
The owl, very gravely, got down from his perch,

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Walked round, and regarded his fault-finding critic (Who thought he was stuffed) with a glance analytic', And then fairly hooted, as if he should say, "Your learning's at fault this time, anyway; Don't waste it again on a live bird, I pray. I'm an owl; you're another. Sir Critic, good-day!" And the barber kept on shaving.

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VIII.

DAVID SWAN.-A FANTASY.

BY NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE.'

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WE can be but partially acquainted even with the events which actually influence our course through life, and our final destiny. There are innumerable other events, if such they may be called, which come close upon us, yet pass away without actual results, or even betraying their near approach, by the reflection of any light or shadow across our minds. Could we know all the vicissitudes of our fortunes, life would be too full of 15 hope and fear, exultation or disappointment, to afford us a single hour of true serenity. This idea may be illustrated by a page from the secret history of David Swan.

We have nothing to do with David until we find 20 him, at the age of twenty, on the highroad from his native place to the city of Boston, where his uncle, a small dealer in the grocery line, was to take him behind the counter. Be it enough to say that he was a native of New Hampshire, born of respectable parents,

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and had received an ordinary school education, with a classic finish by a year at Gilmanton Academy.

After journeying on foot from sunrise till nearly noon of a summer's day, his weariness and the increasing heat determined him to sit down in the first convenient shade and await the coming up of the stagecoach. As if planted on purpose for him, there soon appeared a little tuft of maples, with a delightful recess in the midst, and such a fresh bubbling spring that it seemed never to have sparkled for any wayfarer' but David 10 Swan. Virgin or not, he kissed it with his thirsty lips, and then flung himself along the brink, pillowing his head upon some shirts and a pair of pantaloons tied up in a striped cotton handkerchief. The sunbeams could not reach him; the dust did not yet rise from the road, after the heavy rain of yesterday; and his grassy lair suited the young man better than a bed of down. The spring murmured drowsily beside him; the branches waved dreamily across the blue sky overhead; and a deep sleep, perchance hiding dreams within its depths, fell upon David Swan. But we are to relate events which he did not dream of.

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While he lay sound asleep in the shade, other people were wide-awake and passed to and fro afoot,' on horseback, and in all sorts of vehicles along the sunny road 25 by his bedchamber. Some looked neither to the right hand nor the left, and knew not that he was there; some merely glanced that way, without admitting the slumberer among their busy thoughts; some laughed to see how soundly he slept; and several, whose hearts were 30 brimming full of scorn, ejected their venomous superfluity on David Swan. A middle-aged widow, when nobody else was near, thrust her head a little way into the recess, and vowed that the young fellow looked