ively uninstructed classes, it is quite out of the question to
act as if matters of common intelligence and universal interest were the
private property of a secret society, only to be meddled with by those
who know the grip and the password.

We must get over the habit of transferring the limitations of the
nervous temperament and of hectic constitutions to the great Source
of all the mighty forces of nature, animate and inanimate. We may
confidently trust that we have over us a Being thoroughly robust and
grandly magnanimous, in distinction from the Infinite Invalid bred in
the studies of sickly monomaniacs, who corresponds to a very common
human type, but makes us blush for him when we contrast him with a truly
noble man, such as most of us have had the privilege of knowing both in
public and in private life.

I was not a little pleased to find that the Lady, in spite of her
letter, sat through the young man's reading of portions of his poem with
a good deal of complacency. I think I can guess what is in her mind. She
believes, as so many women do, in that great remedy for discontent, and
doubts about humanity, and questionings of Providence, and all sorts of
youthful vagaries,--I mean the love-cure. And she thinks, not without
some reason, that these astronomical lessons, and these readings of
poetry and daily proximity at the table, and the need of two young
hearts that have been long feeling lonely, and youth and nature and "all
impulses of soul and sense," as Coleridge has it, will bring these two
young people into closer relations than they perhaps have yet thought
of; and so that sweet lesson of loving the neighbor whom he has seen
may lead him into deeper and more trusting communion with the Friend and
Father whom he has not seen.

The Young Girl evidently did not intend that her accomplice should be a
loser by the summary act of the Member of the Haouse: I took occasion
to ask That Boy what had become of all the popguns. He gave me to
understand that popguns were played out, but that he had got a squirt
and a whip, and considered himself better off than before.

This great world is full of mysteries. I can comprehend the pleasure to
be got out of the hydraulic engine; but what can be the fascination of a
whip, when one has nothing to flagellate but the calves of his own legs,
I could never understand. Yet a small riding-whip is the most
popular article with the miscellaneous New-Englander at all great
gat