able where she had played her part so becomingly. It is safe to
say that each of the Annexes world have liked to be asked the lover's
last question by the very nice young man who had been a pleasant
companion at the table and elsewhere to each of them. That same question
is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and a woman does not
mind having a dozen or more such compliments to string on the rosary of
her remembrances. Whether either of them was glad, on the whole, that he
had not offered himself to the other in preference to herself would be a
mean, shabby question, and I think altogether too well of you who are
reading this paper to suppose that you would entertain the idea of asking
it.

It was a very pleasant occasion when the Doctor brought Avis over to sit
with us at the table where she used to stand and wait upon us. We
wondered how we could for a moment have questioned that she was one to be
waited upon, and not made for the humble office which nevertheless she
performed so cheerfully and so well.

Commencements and other Celebrations, American and English.

The social habits of our people have undergone an immense change within
the past half century, largely in consequence of the vast development of
the means of intercourse between different neighborhoods.

Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, church assemblages,
school anniversaries, town centennials,--all possible occasions for
getting crowds together are made the most of. "'T is sixty years
since,"--and a good many years over,--the time to which my memory
extends. The great days of the year were, Election,--General Election on
Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which time
lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July,
when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time of
feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness and
fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of
melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It
was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook
fair, but so it was when I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and the
crowds on the Common were to the promiscuous many the essential parts of
the great occasion. They had been so for generations, and it was only
gradually that the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the decencies
and solemnities of the present sober ann