ness in the air, and a tender bloom upon the hori- | nette forgot herself. Alas! that summers will pass.

zon.

The trees, not yet reddened, wave gently and sigh in the light warm breeze, that, deepened into a cold gale, shall tear them relentlessly from the boughs. There is that melancholy, prescient of decay, which haunts the last summer days. There is that universal repose which lies upon the heart like balm. You hear the church-bells; you see the slow-moving congregation; the silence follows, and the sound of hymns. Then comes the sermon and the benediction. What myriad groups of youth and age, of every experience, are every where gathered this solemn morning! And for how many, many years, in countless congregations, have they all been gathered! They who come no longer are yet near, and the sound of the singing and the preaching which they shall hear no more floats gently out of the open windows and dies among the graves. What soft, plastic hearts of youths and maidens are beating with hope in the pews! What graver pulses of age throb with remembrance as the word is spoken! Consider that every week, in every year, each one of these congregations gathers together, and hears read the life of Christ, and listens to his commands; and think how hardly sinners are yet judged, and how pitilessly we all cast stones at

the fallen.

The blonde is now a shriveled old mummy with gold beads around her tawny neck, railing at the world in which she never mated; the brunette is the comely grandmother of loving and lovely children."

So said my grandfather, who was sadly given to prosing, but whose memory was perfect. You, Zoe and Una, in the absence of new men, have been reading the old books by the sea and among the hills. Is it not the same story in all? If your hearts have been touched-if an old Easy Chair, itself a grandfather, may dare to suggest what no younger man may, that you have been in love, have you not found that the blondes and the brunettes are much the same? that men are not very different, and still loudly toast those whom they do not very deeply love, and silently worship the real Divinity of their lives? Be sure of it; and be equally sure that the qualities which made the brunette the girl she was, have an immortal excellence, and will make you equally a belle. Think gently, and speak tenderly of those who trip and stumble, and your influence shall make men think and speak so; and you, even you, Zoe and Una, shall thus do something, and a good thing, toward the happy day of which we all dream; and so shall you ever be gently and tenderly remembered in the places which your youth and beauty adorned.

"How about stocks?" we inquired.

"

Ah! Zoe and Una, have mercy and come down into the parlor! Bethink yourselves in your pouting prettiness and fresh morning dresses, that nothing is so graceful as goodness, nor so beautiful THE young man of Messrs. Dry, Sly, and Lye, as charity. Nothing will so surely make you a came into our office the other day with a singular belle, and the queen of love and beauty, as to show | leer in the corner of his eye. that you have both. Men admire gifts, and talents, and accomplishments; but they love that sweetness of nature and character which Adam loved in Eve. Search the records of the most famous successes of belles, and you will find that every man honored the woman who showed that she did not think sarcasm wit, nor heartlessness gayety. Hear what the grandfather of this Easy Chair said to it, when it was no more than a three-legged stool:

Down, rather," replied the young man. "Crystal Palace?" asked we.

"Plenty to be had at easy rates," answered the same young financier, without moving a muscle of betrayal.

It was in May that we saw him last. In May, just after the attenuated procession and the inaugural ode and speeches. In May, just as Mr. Barnum had put his shoulder to that sadly-mired wheel, to learn, as it seems, that some things can not be done as well as others.

Since the resignation of the President and the fall of stock, we believe, to five per cent., there has been a liberal display of cheap wit at the expense of the late chief and of the whole undertaking. With peculiar point Mr. Barnum has been advised to confine his attention exclusively to mermaids. With sly and graceful innuendo he has been charged to return to his muttons, meaning woolly horse. He has been, as vulgar boys about our Chair say, twitted with being unable to turn the Crystal Palace into a museum. He has endured the usual reward of unsuccessful effort, the bitter sarcasm and censure of those whom he sought to benefit.

"Grandson, when I was young, long and long ago, I was a beau and loved the sex; which, as you hope to be an Easy Chair, never fail to do. It chanced, one day in June, that I heard a lively debate about the charms of two rival women at the Springs among the mountains. It was in the days of horseback and saddle-bags, and I put my clean shirt into one bag and my boots into the other, and departed to behold the belles. My son, one was tall, and fair, and like a camelia, when the noonday sun shines upon it. The other was dark, yet like a violet in whose heart the sun nestles. The blonde was brilliant, accomplished, and clever; the brunette was not. To talk with the blonde was to be lost in admiration among lofty mountains, with graceful and imposing lines and sweeps; but you longed, after a time, to press them away, and Having declined to take stock in the reorganized breathe the pure, open, unconfined air and sun- enterprise, we feel quite at liberty to express our shine. To be with the brunette-for you did not sentiments about the undertaking and its failure. talk much-was to be lifted into the serenity of the At the most critical moment in the affairs of the summer sky, and to exist contented. The men institution Mr. Barnum consented to give his name, toasted the blonde, and her name was heard amidst and prestige, and efforts, to restore the value of the the ring of clashing glasses, and every new comer stock and secure the success of the exhibition. He sought to be presented, and boasted aloud when he brought to the task familiarity with affairs, finanhad won a smile. But the men thought of the brucial shrewdness, and good-humored resolution, as nette in secret, and pledged her silently, not with wine but with their heart's worship, and the new comers asked themselves, 'Am I worthy to be presented?' The secret I soon discovered, my grand-ter of business. son, and may you be as astute as your ancestor! The enterprise failed. The President found that The blonde was devoted to herself, and the bru- he had made a mistake, and resigned. But Homer

well as capital. He undertook it for his own advantage, doubtless, and for that of the stockholders. Mr. Barnum is a business man, and this was a mat

has been known to nod, and great generals have retreated. It can not, surely, be urged against Mr. Barnum that he did not succeed in a task that was universally conceded to be impracticable. It is sad to recall the intrepid, but limited band of directors and reverend clergy that marched so gallantly up Broadway in the semi-drizzly May-day, like a forlorn hope heroically charging a breach. The echoes of the inaugural eloquence linger still among the airy arches of the Palace. The boom of the colossal musical congress has not yet died away. It is a still an exhibition, and with a moral. It is a sermon in iron and glass and the collected wares of the world.

We inquired of Messrs. Dry, Sly, and Lye's young man what would be the probable destination of the palace. "The new direction will perhaps hardly imitate the fate of the London prototype of the Palace, and remove it to some suburban Sydenham?"

The young man looked sagaciously, and said that he had heard no such intention expressed as yet. He did not know what might be done. The resources of the American genius were ample, and it was not hard to do any thing it might resolve.

"Except to make a Crystal Palace succeed?" interposed we, interrogatively.

That very singular leer appeared again in the corner of the eye of the young man of Messrs. Dry, Sly, and Lye.

"Mr. Dry is usually so considered," replied the young man, sedately.

"Mr. Dry is well named," we said, with animation.

"I am said to resemble him," answered the youth. "In conversation, certainly," rejoined we, with imperturbable gravity.

"You don't care to take a few shares ?" asked he. To such an inquiry a bland smile was the best and most ready reply. The young man took his hat.

"Have you ever heard of the South Sea?" asked

If we could have sat in our Easy Chair at all the College Commencements to which we have been bidden during the Dog-days, how much we should have to report to our readers. But we have been struggling to ascertain the occult relation between midsummer heats and literature. It is notorious that the tropics are not favorable to the development of literary genius; that, in fact, the colder climates are favored by the Muses. Yet the annual festivals of the Muses, with us, are celebrated upon the arid heights of the year. What was said of one orator is true of all: His audience were melted before him." Is it, perhaps, because youth is "the time of roses," that the triumphs of its literary power culminate in summer? It is surely worth a thought. It might not be an unpromising theme for a graduate's oration, But we can not enlarge upon it. We simply did not go to the Commencements. We staid in our chair. It was warm. By much sitting in the Dog-days the cushions of Easy Chairs, even, do become warm. We sat there, brooding, as it were-hatching, if you please-a whole brood of pleasant and melancholy remembrances.

"The senior partner says," he replied, after a pause, "that it was one of the bubbles of an inflated time. It arose from the extremes of self-confidence and of miserable imitation. The Yankee nation is the most boastful and the most foolishly dependent of any. A Crystal Palace exhibition was equally unnecessary and impracticable at that time and in that place. The glory of the idea had been reaped by England, and the prestige of a successful adaptation of the idea will accrue to France next year. There can not be a World's Fair every year, except under very different conditions from those that were deemed sufficient in our Crystal Palace enterprise. It is to be seen whether the Sydenham building will succeed as a speculation. The expenses are enormous, but every thing has been done in the best and most admirable manner. Site, convenience of access, facility of observation, intelligence of classification, all these things have been duly considered and arranged. It enjoys the aristocratic prestige which is so much the secret of success of all things English. It is truly a representative exhibition of the world, and it is visited by twenty thousand persons a day. This may not be a pecuniary, but it is a popular, success. It is impossible not to feel that an exhibition so visited is exerting some kind of influence, and an influence toward good things. We have never had the consolation of that conviction-no man has felt that our Crystal Palace was, except to a very few persons, more than a curious show-box. The reason of the utter failure is to be sought in the fact that the whole thing was unreal, it was an imitation, it was an ill-considered speculation. But the event ought not to be regarded as a final failure of all such enterprises among us. It ought rather to convince us that we can achieve our ends only by obeying the peculiar bent of our own genius and We, whose collegiate days are dim already in the the structure of our society," etc., etc., etc., said past, yet whose heart bounds-to use the old figure Messrs. Dry, Sly, and Lye's young man senten-like that of the old war-horse at the sound of the tiously.

"You have a very wise man for senior partner," said we, with great reverence.

Charles Lamb lamented, in his quaint and pensive way, that he had been defrauded of the sweet fruit of academic instruction. Elia has made "Oxford in the Vacation" almost as memorable, certainly as romantic, as ever it was in triumphant term-time, to the most reckless and generous of Gentlemen-Commoners. These early associations, these young friendships, based upon humane and sympathetic grounds, founded in a common interest in things which are permanently interesting, and not temporary matters, like the tumults of business, politics, and affairs in general, have an indefinable charm, and you will find a man's heart soften, even after it had grown very hard indeed, when an ap peal comes from a college friend, a chum, a contemporary.

trumpet, whenever an anniversary, or a letter, or a chance friend recalls them, stoutly but sadly declined all invitations this summer, until one came

in the sweetest month of the year. To hear that live in memories wherein to be immortal is a fate summons was to obey. It was not to a solemn | fairer than that of flies embalmed in amber? Sing Commencement, nor to a College Society, nor to on undauntedly, occasional Commencement poets! that melancholy association of the Alumni which and believe that you do not sing in vain. Years rises upon the horizon of every college festivity as hence some comely matron will recall this day, and a memento mori, but to the parting celebration of crown you anew with laurel yet ungrown. Believe the Class, to the festival of Hope rather than of in yourselves, in your poetry, and in the Future. Memory. We hurried to worship the rising sun. But over the whole day hung an atmosphere of sadness. In youth all emotions are intense. We have not yet learned to doubt the duration of our feeling in the very moment of its mastery over us. It lies now a gentle picture in the past.

So soon,

But not gay only, nor grotesque, are the chords struck by the associations of the day. There is dancing afterward upon the green, in the hall, around the tree, perhaps. There is music-there may be moonlight promenades, flirtations, weeping, passionate adieus before the "fifty gallons," etc. etc. The pale stars at early dawn may see paler facesyouth eclipsed; the wild serenade may fall mournfully upon the ears of love and longing; but the day is enshrined and immortal. They go sadly homeward, the youth that were so gay; and they who have never truly suffered feel the prescience of sorrow. They sit upon the bedside with a vague long

so rapidly, does Time snatch up completed events, and hang them along the twilight gallery of memory. There were peals of morning music, a winding procession under memorial trees and along sunny paths-there was the eager, happy crowd in the hall; wise collegians sad with profound experience; lovely girls unconscious that they were filling old parts in a play that their grandmothers play-ing and regret. They stand at the window with ed; anxious fathers, pleased mothers, fluttering sisters-there was soft summer air stealing in at open windows, the waving of fans, the long and warm expectation then the bursts of approaching music, and the rush and tumble of the crowd outside.

an inexplicable grief. It is not an immortal sorrow. They are all better next morning. There even comes a time when they smile at the sentimentality of which they were the victims. But the day never dawns when they do not confess that the sorrow was as real as any sorrow they have known.

"You were deluded, jeune homme," says Madame Sangfroid in Paris, years afterward, when the youth confesses his regret.

"Madame Sangfroid, is he most deluded who believes every thing, or he who doubts every thing?

"C'est un drôle de philosophe!" replies Madame, adjusting her ear-rings.

O happy orator in flowing robes! Grave, gay, and graceful, his discourse proceeds. Resounding applause, flashing eyes, flushing cheeks, proclaim his success more surely than roaring guns the triumph of an army. He reviews the eventful college course. It is an epic of punches surreptitiously consumed-of tyrannical laws dexterously evaded. Four years of fun, of cloudless sun, to which occasional recitations and necessary chapels supply the shadow. What duties lie before us! We are quitting the tranquil and flowery shores of youth, and now our barques head for the uncertain ocean. We are exchanging romance for reality; our visions are ending. We have been naughty boys—yes, Amanda, with blue violets in your muslin bonnet !-we have been dissipated, and have done indescribable things. To us, dear companions, whose movements are awkward in the novelty of body-coats, worn this day for the first time in life-to us the destiny of our glorious country is intrusted. Farewell, ven-higher, and better, and more satisfactory than the erable shades! Farewell, venerable maids! whose patience as landladies we have tried so sorely. Farewell, venerated and beloved instructors, our affection is ardent as we part forever! Farewell, groves of Academe, classic Jenkinsville, adieu! Friends, companions, lovers! hand to hand, and heart to heart, tearfully we turn from scenes so dear, and plunge headlong into

"Fifty gallons of punch are ordered for the graduating supper to-night," exclaimed an alumnus of twenty years standing, just as we were breathlessly imbibing the peroration of the oration. But we saw the final gesture, the sweeping sleeve, the animated eye, the pleased consciousness of success as the orator sank into his seat, and enthusiastic plaudits drowned the waltz of Lanner that began to breathe from the band.

In a country like ours we can not over-estimate the value and influence of these college reunions. They are almost the only festivals consecrated to intellectual sympathy. Our dinners and suppers and celebrations have all reference to some political, or financial, or sectarian bond. But a Commencement is the feast of the intellect. However fast and furious our lives may be, we are annually reminded upon these days that there is something

kind of success we are pursuing. It is the reunion of friendship and genial sociality. Men are but children. Under your whiskers and wrinkles your college chum sees the old boy. We are barricaded with business, with families, and grave affairs; but we are boys at heart, or we ought to be; and nothing more tends to keep feeling perennially fresh, than the annual meeting of those who were boys together.

SOME months since we noted the incredulity with which the French press received the reported discovery of the "viviparous fish" of California. Even the great authority of Agassiz was not sufficient to convince the skeptical Gauls that so notable an exception to the general law of nature had been brought to light. But Mr. Jackson and Professor Agassiz were right, and the doubters were all wrong. And what is still more strange, the fish is a very common one in the Golden Land. "They are," writes a San Francisco correspondent of this Easy Chair,

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Then the poem-perhaps you have heard college poems. Possibly you know that the poet has large collars and discursive extremities to his cravat. How the puns explode along the line! It is like the broadside of Nelson at Trafalgar, one blaze of a flat, scaly fish, weighing from a few ounces up glory. This Easy Chair must be allowed to envy to two pounds. The average weight of those to be the poets, the occasional poets. They shall not seen daily in our markets is some three-fourths of live, possibly, in Little and Brown's edition, nor a pound." Hundreds and thousands of persons be annotated by Professor Child, most accomplished have caught and dressed and eaten of these fish. and sympathetic of Editors. But shall they not | Many of them must have seen the "bag subdivided

internally into a number of distinct pouches," in which a score or so of young were wrapped up, and cunningly packed away, heads and tails, so as to save space. Yet until Mr. Jackson made his chance-cast, no man ever thought it worth his while to notice the singular fact.

in March) until the 'good set' she counted on meet. ing is on the wing, would not your male friend Mr. Silkmercer suffer drearily for the mishap?

"Women (trust my word for it) are very much the same thing all over the world; and nothing so sharpens their tongues as a leaden sky hiding the blossom of the spring.

worst. What would you say of trunks packed in May, for Aix-la-Chapelle or Baden, and the tedium of the leaden sky keeping the fair proprietress in the winter rooms until August has fairly burst? Is there not here good reason for scenes? Suppose your pretty friend Mrs. Silkmercer kept back a fortThe name Embiotica Jacksonii, bestowed by Agas-night from her corner parlor at Saratoga (engaged siz upon this fish, will perpetuate in the scientific world the memory of ALONZO C. JACKSON, the young naval officer who brought to light this new fact in natural history. But there are many who will need no memorial of him, besides the remembrance of his rare worth and brilliant promise. At the very time when his discovery was made, he was laying the foundations of the disease which was soon to end his earthly life. Dispatched by Government to California upon important business, in his eagerness to bring it to a speedy and successful conclusion, he overpassed the limits set to human endurance. The overtasked system sank under the effort; a disease of the brain ensued, and he returned to his home to die. One who knew him well thus writes: "Young as he was" (he died at the age of eight-and-twenty years), "he had already won for himself a distinguished name in his profession. There was no brighter intellect, no purer spirit, no nobler nature than his; no resolution more undaunted, no ambition more chastened, no love more true. Nature had gifted him with such versatility of talent and with so earnest a love of investigation, that few things escaped his keen and accurate observation, or failed to contribute to his improvement and delight. Hence arose that rich cultivation in every department of science and art, and that even and beautiful balance of mind which made him so charming as a companion, and gave such variety and freshness to his conversation."

OUR FOREIGN GOSSIP.

WE are fatigued this month; we admit it; we ask favor; we plead the heat, we plead the dust; in short, we will plead any thing that our courteous readers will admit. We shall serve them, as we served them last month, with a letter from a friend. He has a keen eye; he is truthful (as the French reckon truthfulness). We shall let him talk for himself-only premising that in the translation (for our friend is Parisian) we have worried his deft French phrases into our own home-sounding English.

"But again, the matter has affected the stockmarket. The barometer has been quoted on the Bourse! A gleam of sunshine has carried up the funds like a Turkish victory, and a wet-jacket has brought them down like a new manifesto from Nicholas. The speculators have made good play upon the weather fears of the stockholders; and the French Bear' has latterly made his appearance wrapped in a Mackintosh, and has taken the precaution to hold his umbrella under the pump (if no rain was falling), and has talked in a despondent way of the crops, and of a short harvest.

"Our Bull,' on the other hand, eager for a rise, has sported white duck trowsers-concealing his shiver with a small glass of Cognac-and, with a blue-and-white cravat, has talked sportively of the heat, and of the pleasant reports from the provinces.

"Still another play of the stock-dealers I must tell you of, and with the story drift away from the weather. A broker (who would have done credit to Wall Street) was speculating for a fall; it did not come so soon as he had hoped; in two days his stock limit expired; news was favorable; every thing looked badly for his bargain. He bethought himself of a last resource. He laid his scheme open to a friend from the provinces, who was unknown on the Bourse. He purchased for him a crimson cap with a blue tassel, he ordered a straight-breasted frock, in the manner of the Turkish legation, he hired a magnificent equipage, and agreed with him that just before the hour for the closing of the Bourse he should drive in great haste to the Square-call eagerly for an agent, and order the immediate sale of a large amount of the three per cents.

"At the given hour the provincial friend, en grande tenue as a Turkish official of high rank, drove to the Bourse, and ordered the immediate sale of the large amount of stocks which the broker had put in his hands.

Bah," he begins, "what weather! Do not fancy that any ordinary days, or even weeks, of rain can have led me into such outery at the very beginning of my sheet. But what do you say to two "People whispered unquietly; the stranger passmonths of cloud-of drizzle-of cold-of wind-ofed with many for the Turkish embassador himself; sour temper of quarrelings between man and wife? We are now in the front half of July, and, upon my honor as a man who has basked on your Broadway flagging under the sultriness of August, I do assure you I have seen the sun but ten times in as many weeks.

at least he was attached to the legation; he must be in the possession of disastrous news; there could be no doubt of it. The sales multiplied; a panic seized the dealers; there was a fall of ten per cent. : and our shrewd broker, standing ready, bought up enough to make good his bargain, and to furnish his provincial friend of the crimson cap with salmon, spring-chickens, and Chateau Margaux at the Trois Frères Provençaur.

"If you doubt my story, look in the papers; for though they are closely muzzled on all weightier topics, they still venture an opinion about the weather. There are hints even that one or two di- Apropos of the weather, you can not imagine vorce affairs are on the tapis, by reason of the ill-what a cut-throat air belongs to the little countryblood which has grown out of the clouded weeks. places (Maisons de Campagne they call them) in the I put it to you, as a man of some philosophical dis- neighborhood of Paris, under such a wet sky as this cernment, if a lady who has expended a matter of of 1854. French country is made for sunshine; its ten thousand francs on spring dresses, and finds no parterres, its gravel walks, its clipped trees, its day on which she can wear them, until midsummer dwarfed hollies, its extinguisher-topped houses, and the grisettes have made them old, is in the cul- want sunlight. Without it, the weeds shoot up in tivation of a meck temperament? Nor is this the the grass, dampness rests in the hollows of the walk,

the peacock trees shiver like ghosts, and the tiled tower-tops look exceeding dismal. And the people are dismal in them.

the cottage, in concert with her economic husband, endeavored to stretch out their bourgeois dinner with a pot of greens for the dozen guests. The French have a happy art in this thing; and although the dinner might be somewhat maigre (there is no translating that word), it would yet fill the dishes, and discourage future Sunday visits.

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'Monsieur Didier undertook, with French politesse, to explain the matter to his friends; he regretted exceedingly that he had been taken by surprise; he feared he should have but a short dinner for them; but, at that distance from Paris, it was exceedingly difficult to provide as he should be

'You, and your friend, and your friend's friend, have got a country-place-perhaps at Hoboken, perhaps at Flushing-where you go and enjoy (barring the mosquitoes) a month or two, between July and September. But it is not the French way: if you speak of Baden, or Homburg-à la bonne heure! This will do. Dress and intrigue and chitchat go thither, and these three make any spot enjoyable to a Parisian born. As for the little outlying extinguisher-topped houses of which I spoke, they are rented, sometimes by an economic fam-gratified in doing. ily of English people, with a much-enduring governess in their train, who teaches Frenchisms, and suffers Englishisms. Or perhaps the suburban place is in the hands of one of your countrymen, who keeps a coach, and a coachman and footman in very broad gilt bands. (By the way, I have remarked that your people specially love a broad gilt band: how is this?)

"Again, the out-of-town house belongs to an honest bourgeois, who has hosts of friends, and who goes into the country three months in the year to economize; and one of the Paris paragraphists tells latterly a funny story of this sort of economy, which, for want of better things, I will set down in my letter.

"The good bourgeois Didier, for the sake of a nice retrenchment in the year's outgoings, took a cottage ornée at St. Germain. A week went well; and though the whey and the curds, and the plain boiled-meat and greens, were not altogether so satisfactory as the cuisine of the town, yet there was a saving, and Monsieur and Madame Didier rejoiced in the saving.

"But Sunday came. It is a capital visiting day, is Sunday; especially for those who take a short run in the country for a breath of fresh air, and who have a friend with a quiet terrace of his own, where one may smoke an evening cigar. Well, at noon the bell of the Didier cottage rang. It was a bourgeois friend. Madame Didier took courage at finding him alone, and welcomed him kindly, and hoped Madame his wife was well.

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'Parfaitement-perfectly well,' he said, and had loitered away with his sister-in-law, but they would both follow him presently, and his two little boys, whom he had brought out for a country freshening. "Madame Didier looked hard at Monsieur Didier, and bit her lip.

"When one receives a visitor in the country, one asks (or should ask) them to dine. It is the way hereabout. (I hope it is the way with you.) The bourgeois friend of Monsieur Didier did not indeed wait an invitation, but the wife, and the wife's sister, and the little ones, threw off their hats, and made the Didier cottage and the Didier walks their own. "But the Didiers had other friends; and in an hour there was a new touch at the bell. Madame Didier recognized in a fright the voice of a town neighbor, and overheard him assuring her husband that he had no idea of forgetting him-not he. It was a sorry thing to be shut up in a lonely country house; he should look in upon him from time to time; he might perhaps bring, from time to time, a friend or two; he begged to present Monsieur Soaker, a cousin of his wife's: he thought Monsieur Didier had a charming little place.

"Nor was this all: acquaintances multiplied, until Madame Didier had a round company of thirteen all to dine, as a matter of course. The lady of VOL. IX.-No. 52.-N N

'The guests, of course, would listen to no apol ogies. His old neighbor-a plethoric, red-faced man-knew it would all be quite well; he knew his old friend Didier; he was not the man to send a guest hungry from his table; he was preparing a surprise for them; he had no doubt, for his own part, that he (Didier) had sent down to Paris by telegraph, and would serve them capitally; and he tapped M. Didier on the back in a very familiar manner.

"Monsieur Didier, in a disturbed state, retired to consult anew with his wife. In the midst, however, of their consultation, the Didier bell sounded for the fifth time. The new visitor was a gentleman of importance-a valued friend, Baron —. M. Didier was largely indebted to him, and was just now looking for his interest in behalf of his business schemes. It would never do to serve the Baron with a pot of greens. There was nothing to be done but to make a virtue of the joke of the bourgeois neighbor, and to telegraph to a Paris restau rateur for a dinner for fourteen.

"Of course the dinner was capital; the visitors were charmed; the bourgeois neighbor, more plethoric than before, grew hilarious in recalling his prediction. He knew his friend Didier. He should visit him again.

"The hint was not lost upon Madame Didier; and the curtain talk of the economic bourgeois couple, based upon a bill of the Paris restaurateur for seven hundred francs, ended in a resolution to go to the Springs.

"The next Sunday the plethoric neighbor of M. Didier appeared at the Didier gate, and rang, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead; and rang, and wiped his forehead again. He looked through the bars, and then stepped to the corner, and walking back to the entrance, rang again more stoutly. He next tried the gate, casting his eye up in search of the fastenings. There was a placard over his head, and stepping back a pace or two, he read a notice that the cottage was to rent. "Dame,' said the plethoric man, nous étions trop !'"

"THIS matter of dinners is reminder of a pleasant joke which used to be told about the Abbé Prevost, who was a great gourmand, and specially fond of artichokes (not your heavy Jerusalem artichokes), à l'huile-that is to say, with a dressing of oil. His friend Fontenelle was as great a gourmand as the Abbé, and quite as fond of artichokes-with a dressing of butter. It happened once on a day that they were to dine together. The Abbé entreated that the artichokes should be served à l'huile; his friend was as urgent that they should be served with butter. They arranged the difficulty by ordering half in one style and half in the other. But before the dinner was served the friend of the Abbé fell suddenly ill;