; for the open gate
Lets in, with him, perchance a guest unknown,
On whom slow words of courtesy must wait.

Or when the presence waited for has come,
It may be dull or cold, too sad or light:
A look that shows the heart away from home
Can often put the dearest words to flight.

Perhaps the time of meeting, or the form,
May chill or wither what we've longed to say:
What fits the sunshine will not fit the storm--
What blends with twilight, jars with noon of day.

Again, when all things seem our wish to serve,
Full opportunity may strike us dumb--
May sink our precious thoughts in deep reserve,
And to the surface bid the lightest come.

And often ere our friend is out of sight,
We start: the thing can scarce be credited--
We have been silent, or our words been trite,
And here's the dearest thing of all _unsaid_!

CHARLOTTE F. BATES.

LAURENTINUM.

If anybody ever could have enjoyed living in heathen times, it
must have been Pliny the Younger. A friend of ours calls him the
gentlemanly letter writer, and so he was. He wrote letters which must
have been treats to his correspondents. It is well that some of his
notes did not require answers, for, as the letters of "the parties of
the second part" are irretrievably lost, the annoyance one feels over
a one-sided record is somewhat abated. Only the imperial replies are
preserved. But, as we have said, Caius Plinius Caecilius Secundus
(nephew to the ponderously fat and still more ponderously learned C.
Plinius Secundus, who, like Leibnitz in latter times, sat, wrote, was
read to, slept, and ate in his arm-chair for days together) must
have enjoyed living. If he had not had so gentle a disposition and so
loving a recollection of his uncle, we might have fancied him terribly
bored by that worthy; for the elder Pliny was a _heluo miraculorum_,
believing in and jotting down everything he heard, saw or read, like
the immortal Mr. Pickwick. A book or a reader was ever at his elbow--a
tablet or parchment ever within reach. And all this was undertaken
or done for his nephew's advantage. There could have been but little
pleasure in having such a guardian, though the nephew's easy, loving
temper and delicate constitution caused him to be petted a good deal.
A lucky dyspepsia (the Romans must have had the dyspepsia from eating
the messes their Greek cooks put upon their tables) spared him from
continuous attendance