II.--SERIOUS MUSINGS.

My eyes are dim with childish tears,
My heart is idly stirr'd,
For the same sound is in mine ears,
Which in those days I heard.
Thus fares it still in our decay;
And yet the wiser mind
Mourns less for what age takes away,
Than what it leaves behind.

WORDSWORTH.

After consultation with friends, and much serious consideration on such a
momentous subject, it having been finally settled on between the wife and
myself to educate Benjie to the barber and haircutting line, we looked
round about us in the world for a suitable master to whom we might
entrust our dear laddie, he having now finished his education, and
reached his fourteenth year.

It was visible in a twinkling to us both, that his apprenticeship could
not be gone through with at home in that first-rate style which would
enable him to reach the top of the tree in his profession; yet it gave us
a sore heart to think of sending away, at so tender an age, one who was
so dear to his mother and me, and whom we had, as it were, in a manner
made a pet of; so we reckoned it best to article him for a twelvemonth
with Ebenezer Packwood at the corner, before finally sending him off to
Edinburgh, to get his finishing in the wig, false-curl, and hair-baking
department, under Urquhart, Maclachlan, or Connal. Accordingly, I sent
for Eben to come and eat an egg with me--matters were entered upon and
arranged--Benjie was sent on trial; and though at first he funked and
fought refractory, he came, to the astonishment of his master and the old
apprentice, in less than no time to cut hair without many visible shear-
marks; and, within the first quarter, succeeded, without so much as
drawing blood, to unbristle, for a wager of his master's, the Saturday
night's countenance of Daniel Shoebrush himself, who was as rough as a
badger.

Having thus done for Benjie, it now behoved me to have an eye towards
myself; for, having turned the corner of manhood, I found that I was
beginning to be wearing away down the hillside of life. Customers, who
had as much faith in me as almost in their Bible with regard to every
thing connected with my own department, and who could depend on their
cloth being cut according to the newest and most approved fashions, began
now and then to return a coat upon my hand for alteration, as being quite
out of date; while my daily work, to which in the days of other years I
had got up blithe a