One day I was taking a drive with an amiable couple, who, having been married sixteen or seventeen years, had got well over the mysterious influences of honeymoonism.  The husband was acting Jarvey, and I was inside with madame.  The roads being in some places very bad, and neither the lady nor myself being feather-weight, the springs were frequently brought down upon one another with a very disagreeable jerk.  The lady remonstrated: 

“John, I declare these springs are worn out, and the carriage itself is little better.”

“Now, Susan, what’s the good of your talking that way; you know they are perfectly good, my dear.”

“Oh, John! you know what I say is true, and that the carriage has never been touched since we married.”

“My dear, if I prove to you one of your assertions is wrong, I suppose you will be ready to grant the others may be equally incorrect.”

“Well, what then?” said the unsuspecting wife.

“Why, my dear, I’ll prove to you the springs are in perfectly good order,” said the malicious husband, who descried a most abominable bit of road ready for his purpose; and, suiting the action to the word, he put his spicy nags into a hand-canter.  Bang went the springs together; and, despite of all the laws of gravitation, madame and I kept bobbing up and down, and into one another’s laps.

“Oh, John, stop! stop!”

“No, no, my dear, I shall go on till you’re perfectly satisfied with the goodness of the springs and the soundness of the carriage.”

Resistance was useless; John was determined, and the horses would not have tired in a week; so the victim had nothing for it but to cry peccavi, upon which John moderated his pace gradually, and our elastic bounds ceased correspondingly, until we settled once more firmly on our respective cushions; then John turned round, and, with a mixed expression of malice and generosity, said, “Well, my dear, I do think the carriage wants a new lining, but you must admit they are really good springs.”  And the curtain fell on this little scene in the drama of “Sixteen Years after Marriage.”  May the happy couple live to re-enact the same sixty years after marriage!

Our drive brought us to the shore of Lake Canesus, and a lovely scene it was; the banks were in many places timbered to the water’s edge by the virgin forest, now radiant with the rich autumnal tints; the afternoon sun shone forth in all its glory from a cloudless sky, on a ripp’less lake, which, like a burnished mirror, reflected with all the truthfulness of nature the gorgeous scene above; and as you gazed on the azure abyss below, it kept receding and receding till the wearied sight of the creature was lost in the fathomless depths of the work of his Almighty Creator.  Who has not for the moment imagined that he could realise the infinity of space, as, when gazing at some bright star, he strives to measure the distance of the blue curtain spread behind, which, ever receding,