* * * * *

  NOVEMBER.

  Much have I spoken of the faded leaf;
    Long have I listened to the wailing wind,
  And watched it ploughing through the heavy clouds;
    For autumn charms my melancholy mind.

  When autumn comes, the poets sing a dirge: 
    The year must perish; all the flowers are dead;
  The sheaves are gathered; and the mottled quail
    Runs in the stubble, but the lark has fled!

  Still, autumn ushers in the Christmas cheer,
    The holly-berries and the ivy-tree: 
  They weave a chaplet for the Old Year’s heir;
    These waiting mourners do not sing for me!

  I find sweet peace in depths of autumn woods,
    Where grow the ragged ferns and roughened moss;
  The naked, silent trees have taught me this,—­
    The loss of beauty is not always loss!

A VISIT TO THE AUTOCRAT’S LANDLADY.

By the Special Reporter of the “Oceanic Miscellany".

The door was opened by a stout, red-armed lump of a woman, who, in reply to my question, said her name was Bridget, but Biddy they calls her mostly.  There was a rickety hat-stand in the entry, upon which, by the side of a schoolboy’s cap, there hung a broad-brimmed white hat, somewhat fatigued by use, but looking gentle and kindly, as I have often noticed good old gentlemen’s hats do, after they have worn them for a time.  The door of the dining-room was standing wide open, and I went in.  A long table, covered with an oil-cloth, ran up and down the length of the room, and yellow wooden chairs were ranged about it.  She showed me where the Gentleman used to sit, and, at the last part of the time, the Schoolmistress next to him.  The chairs were like the rest, but it was odd enough to notice that they stood close together, touching each other, while all the rest were straggling and separate.  I observed that peculiar atmospheric flavor which has been described by Mr. Balzac, (the French story-teller who borrows so many things from some of our American loading writers,) under the name of odeur de pension.  It is, as one may say, an olfactory perspective of an endless vista of departed breakfasts, dinners, and suppers.  It is similar, if not identical, in all temperate climates; a kind of neutral tint, which forms the perpetual background upon which the banquet of today strikes out its keener but more transitory aroma.  I don’t think it necessary to go into any further particulars, because this atmospheric character has the effect of making the dining-rooms of all boarding-houses seem very much alike; and the accident of a hair-cloth sofa, cold, shiny, slippery, prickly,—­or a veneered sideboard, with a scale off here and there, and a knob or two missing,—­or a portrait, with one hand half under its coat, the other resting on a pious-looking book, —­these accidents, and such as these, make no great difference.