ce list of boxes."

After which, I shall resign myself tranquilly to my fate as a unit, and
glide down the stream of life under whatever skies shine or scowl above,
always and forever nobody but

MATILDA MUFFIN.
BLANK, _67 Smith Street_.

SOME ACCOUNT OF A VISIONARY.

"Dear old Visionary!" It was the epithet usually applied to Everett Gray
by his friends and neighbors. It expresses very well the estimation in
which he was held by nineteen-twentieths of his world. People couldn't
help feeling affection for him, considerably leavened by a half-pitying,
half-wondering appreciation of his character. He was so good, so kind,
so gifted, too. Pity he was so dreamy and romantic, _et cetera, et
cetera_.

Now, from his youth up, nay, from very childhood, Everett had borne the
character thus implied. A verdict was early pronounced on him by an
eminent phrenologist who happened to be visiting the family. "A
beautiful mind, a comprehensive intellect, but marvellously
unpractical,--singularly unfitted to cope with the difficulties of
every-day life." And Everett's mother, hanging on the words of the man
of science, breathless and tearful, murmured to herself, while stroking
her unconscious little son's bright curls,--"I always feared he was too
good for this wicked world."

The child began to justify the professor's _dictum_ with his very first
entry into active life. He entertained ideas for improving the social
condition of rabbits, some time before he could conveniently raise
himself to a level with the hutch in which three of them, jointly
belonging to himself and his brother, abode. His theory was consummate;
in practice, however, it proved imperfect,--and great wrath on the part
of Richard Gray, and much confusion and disappointment to Everett, were
the result.

Richard, two years younger than Everett by the calendar, was at least
three older than he in size, appearance, habits, and self-assertion. He
was what is understood by "a regular boy": a fine, manly little fellow,
practical, unsensitive, hard-headed, and overflowing with life and
vigor. He had little patience with his brother's quiet ways; and his
unsuccessful attempts at working out theories met with no sympathy at
his hands.

After the affair of the rabbits, his experiments, however certain of
success he deemed them, were always made on or with regard to his own
belongings. The little plot of garden-ground which he held in absolute