er would eagerly buy and read a book that told them when he went to
bed and what he had for breakfast, and would pay a ready five-cent
piece for a picture of him as he appeared in the attorney's office, to
preserve as a companion to the equally veritable "portrait of the Hon.
Daniel E. Sickles, as he appeared in prison." Nay, it must be confessed,
that there are some Shakespearean enthusiasts ever dabbling and gabbling
about what they call Shakespeariana, who would give more for the pen
with which he engrossed a deed or wrote "Hamlet," than for the ability
to understand, better than they do or ever can, what he meant by that
mysterious tragedy. Biography has its charms and its uses; but it is not
by what we know of their bare external facts that

"Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time."

What the readers of Shakespeare, who are worthy to know aught of him,
long to know, would have been the same, had he been bred lawyer,
physician, soldier, or sailor. It is of his real life, not of its mere
accidents, that they crave a knowledge; and of that life, it is to be
feared, they will remain forever ignorant, unless he himself has written
it.

THE MINISTER'S WOOING.

[Continued.]

CHAPTER XVI.

We suppose the heroine of a novel, among other privileges and
immunities, has a prescriptive right to her own private boudoir, where,
as a French writer has it, "she appears like a lovely picture in its
frame."

Well, our little Mary is not without this luxury, and to its sacred
precincts we will give you this morning a ticket of admission. Know,
then, that the garret of this gambrel-roofed cottage had a projecting
window on the seaward side, which opened into an immensely large old
apple-tree, and was a look-out as leafy and secluded as a robin's nest.

Garrets are delicious places in any case, for people of thoughtful,
imaginative temperament. Who has not loved a garret in the twilight days
of childhood, with its endless stores of quaint, cast-off, suggestive
antiquity,--old worm-eaten chests,--rickety chairs,--boxes and casks
full of odd comminglings, out of which, with tiny, childish hands,
we fished wonderful hoards of fairy treasure? What peep-holes, and
hiding-places, and undiscoverable retreats we made to ourselves,--where
we sat rejoicing in our security, and bidding defiance to the vague,
distant cry which summon