ent,
respectable piece of bloodshed; and quite as good as Braddock's
disaster, as far as it goes."

"How heartless you must be, Willie, to speak so lightly of such
horrible things!" exclaimed Miss Laura with a look of refined disgust.
"To my mind, Washington's courtship and wedding, and the pleasant life
he led at Mount Vernon, are more entertaining than all your dismal
battles."

"And those charming barge-rides by moonlight," chimed in Ella, "that
the old Virginia planters used to take when they visited each other up
and down the Potomac."

"You are welcome to your courtships and your weddings and your
boat-rides by moonlight," cried Willie, turning up his nose; "but I
would not have given a good fox-hunt with old Lord Fairfax for any of
them: and what a glorious fellow Washington must have been, with his
fine horses and his fine dogs, and his jumping twenty-one feet seven
inches at a bound!"

"Oh, Willie! how can you be so wanting in respect as to call such a
man as Washington '_fellow_'?" exclaimed Laura, with a look of pious
horror. "I am astonished at you!"

"But I said he was glorious; didn't I now, Miss Over-nice?" retorted
Willie.

"Your Cousin Laura, William, is quite right in what she says,"
observed Uncle Juvinell, with something like severity in his look and
tone. "We should never speak of the good and great in other terms than
those of esteem and reverence; for the effect of such a habit is to
cultivate in ourselves those very qualities of mind and heart which
make them worthy of our love and admiration."

Willie was somewhat abashed by this mild rebuke, and apologized in a
dumb way by coughing a time or two behind his slate.

"Uncle," inquired Ella, "is transcendentalism an art or a science?"

"I think I can tell you what that is, Ella," Daniel made haste to put
in; for he never let an opportunity slip of showing off what he knew
to the best advantage.

"I did not call upon you for information, Mr. Wiseacre," said Ella, a
little nettled at her brother's air of superior wisdom.

"Nevertheless," cried Uncle Juvinell, "let us listen, and be wise.
Come, give us the benefit of your knowledge, Daniel, touching this
important matter."

"I overheard father say to you the other day," replied Daniel, without
hesitation, "that your transcendentalism, uncle, was an equal mixture
of opium, moonshine, fog, and sick-man's dreams."

"Good! you have hit it exactly!" cried Uncle Juvinell; "and, to reward