"I tell you what, boys," he said, drawing his rusty sabre with a commanding flourish," the fust thing we want to do is to build a couple of rousin' bonfires to let 'em know we're waitin' fur 'em. That's the way we did to the War, we allers let the enermy know 'at we were a-comin', er a-waitin', an' we thrashed 'em up ev'ry time. We can't fight'em, erless we see 'em."

So by the wavering light of two big fires, which made the dark shadows under the trees look even blacker than before, and whose glare was dimly reflected by the icebound mountain looming up in the gloomy background, they watched out the cold winter night, struggling to rouse their courage, which kept pace with the falling thermometer, by stories of heroic daring. Never had the War seemed so near to them before, the tide of battle appeared to be surging about their own mountain, and when old Joseph Bender remarked in his shrill voice, breaking the oppressive silence, " Boys, I thought I heard cannon a-boomin' down in the gorge this arternoon, an' musketry a-rattlin', too," they strained their ears to catch the imagined roar of artillery somewhere amongst the dense shadows which enveloped their little circle of light on every side. A distant hoot-owl thrilling the lonesome forest with its weird cry seemed to them the baneful harbinger of woe and destruction, and the night wind sighing through the frozen tree-tops tolled a mournful death knell that chilled their very hearts. If the cannon of the Army of the Potomac ever sounded even faintly with reverberating echoes through the North, they sounded then to the listening ears of these watchers on the mountain.

The slow hours dragged themselves out at last, and the cold gray twilight of the early morning made the drowsy guards stretch their stiffened limbs, and watch anxiously for the first rays of the sun rising over the snow-clad hills, but no enemy had yet appeared, whether from presence of mind or absence of body was still a matter of conjecture, a question that at once began a lively debate among the impromptu soldiers. Slowly and sleepily the band dispersed with their military ardor somewhat dampened by the long night's watching, but with spirit enough re

maining to cast reflections on the bravery of their unseen foe, and compliment their own daring. The fear of invasion had come suddenly, and passed away as quickly.

With the rest the postmaster tramped back to his home again, feeling a trifle sheepish in contrast to his ardor of yesterday, but on entering the village store he found a surprise awaiting him, which cleared the drowsiness from his eyes, and roused him to his senses with an overwhelming shock. His slender stock in trade had been overhauled by no gentle hand, and great gaps made therein. The cash drawer was broken open and the money gone; but worst of all, the few letters of the last mail were missing from their boxes, and so, thought the woe-stricken postmaster, as he sank down disconsolately on an emptied nail keg, the calamity became national. Robbery of the village store, robbery of the mail! The postmaster trembled at the thought. And he it was that had roused the townsfolks by a false alarm, now he himself had been outwitted, and the trespassing hand of some artful plunderer had fallen upon his property in very truth, a judgment, it might be, for opening that fated letter. He groaned aloud, and with a sorrowful gaze upon the dismantled room, stood up to hang his rifle back in its place upon the wall, with a sigh of regret that it must descend to fox-hunting again.

Life for a time seemed bitter indeed to the postmaster, but he managed somehow to survive his misfortunes, replenished his stock of commodities, and even increased. the weekly mail by writing a few letters himself. So all ran smoothly again, but he, meanwhile, was quietly biding his time, hoping to find out at last whether he had been deceived by his careless folly, or by the dupes of a sharper mind than his own, that knew his weakness, and took advantage of his prying curiosity. Indeed, he began to be afraid that his calamity was not one of the fortunes of war, as he had persuaded himself at first, but only a common every-day burglary managed a little more shrewdly than usual, and so he kept an ever watchful eye for the man whose name was branded with the fated initials, " Y. T. D."

On a cold winter's night, when the men would sociably draw up their chairs around the red-hot stove in the village store, and tilting back rest their great boots against its fiery sides, while the melting snow ran down in hissing streams, the postmaster-after meekly bowing before the storm of rough jests, which always brought vividly to his mind his unnecessary display of courage not so very long ago—would appeal to them in his wheezy voice, and say with a questioning jesture, "Well, boys, you can laugh, but what do you consider 'at the meanin' of 'Y. T. D.' is, anyway?"

Then, after modestly waiting for some one else to venture the first opinion, old Joseph Bender would answer, winking slying at the rest, and rubbing one horny palm against the other, "I s'pose you erlude to the night 'at we had kind o' a basket picnic, stead o' tusslin' with a enermy. Lemme see, 'twas about the time 'at the Confed'rates in Canady, er else them 'at favor'd 'em, I furgit which 'twas, made a invasion er raid up to St. Albans, but didn't git no further south, an' didn't stay long nother, feared o' our milishay, I s'pose. Wal, I should reeply, a-givin' ez my opinyon, 'at the aforesaid letters stan' fur 'yourn till death,' howsomever, I may be wrong with reespect to my preclusions."

Many years have passed since then, the postmaster is an old man now, and his official cloak has fallen upon the shoulders of one of the younger generation, who even to this day does not find it too burdensome for the successful management of the country store. If you by chance visit the little town of Peru, you will meet, perhaps, a feeble gray-haired man, with sharp blue eyes that have an uncomfortable way of staring at you through glasses that seem to magnify their acuteness; if he is satisfied by his scrutiny of your person, he will hobble away again with the help of his apple-wood cane, but if not, you are destined to a closer inspection. Woe betide the unfortunate who may sign his name upon the register of the village inn with the initials Y. T. D., for the postmaster has not forgotten, and is looking for him yet.

John H. Field.

A PICTURE.

On spinet old, Clarissa plays
The melodies of by-gone days.
Forgotten fugue, a solemn tune,

The bars of stately rigadoon.

With head bent down to scan each note,
A crimson ribbon round her throat,
The very birds to sing forget

As some old-fashioned minuet
Clarissa plays.

King George long since has passed away,
And minuets have had their day.
Within a hidden attic nook

Covered with dust, her music book.
Gone are the keys her fingers pressed,

The bunch of roses at her breast.
But still, unmindful of time's flight,

With face so fair and hands so white,
Clarissa plays.

Edward B. Reed.

ON SOME USES OF FORGOTTEN LITERATURE.

THE

HE top shelf in every library is the peculiar habitat of all forlorn and out-dated books, a sort of limbo where dwell the useless old memoirs, histories, novels, stale poetry, and all the products of dead ages, tumbled in with worn-out guide-books and complimentary volumes; a mass which no one can quite bring himself to destroy. The career of a book is quite human. From a proud position among the aristocracy of the lower shelves, it slowly ascends until, after years, it creeps, aged and out of fashion, to the top shelf, there to enjoy a musty immortality by the tolerance of forgetfulness. So the piles increase until the excess of population overflows into garrets or bonfires, and the paper is hardly worth the rags of which it was made.

Popular opinion, the arbiter of all affairs, ranks a book whose day has gone by as valueless, and there is a ten

dency to get a knowledge of literature, in boarding-school fashion, from bits of great works in elegant and gilt-lettered collections of masterpieces—an abhorrence which ought to be shelved with the encyclopedias, census reports, backgammon covers, and all the other biblia a-biblia of Charles Lamb. But the true lover of reading-an oldfashioned character, as are most good types-has a great love for this body of forgotten literature. He is no mere amateur who has a limited acquaintance with the standard works. You will find him perched on high ladders in darkest corners of big libraries, in the regions of eternal dust. For these are the peculiar haunts of the genius of a library, and often he presides in incarnate form of stuffed owl over those forsaken top shelves.

There is much of really solid value in such unknown places. Without some knowledge of these we can never completely come out of the thoughts and conditions of our own time. Let no historian venture to write if he have not gone far into these regions. No one can bring us back the atmosphere of the age of our grandfathers until our mind is fairly filled with their quaint, extravagant figures, who has not read through old "Lives and Letters," tedious novels and prim poetry without end. It is a hard task; and whether historians have been faithful to it or have drawn chiefly from their fancy it is not here place to enquire. Think, with wonder, of those massive eight and nine volume novels that no puny author of our day could have written, and those endless realms of blank verse of about a hundred years ago. Yet he does not deserve the honorable title of lover of reading who cannot sit down with a comfortable pleasure to one of these big, stupid books.

But this forgotten literature is interesting in a way which its writers themselves least fancied. It is a priceless collection of endlessly varying personalities. They are a never-failing study, for a reader must bear the name. of "student of humanity," in however small a way. What queer, fascinating people, like the characters of Shakespeare! Look at them if you need convincing of