Perhaps nothing that happened during my stay at Bayley’s Four-Corners took me so completely by surprise as Mr. Jaffrey’s radiant countenance the next morning.  The morning itself was not fresher or sunnier.  His round face literally shone with geniality and happiness.  His eyes twinkled like diamonds, and the magnetic light of his hair was turned on full.  He came into my room while I was packing my valise.  He chirped, and prattled, and caroled, and was sorry I was going away—­but never a word about Andy.  However, the boy had probably been dead several years then!

The open wagon that was to carry me to the station stood at the door; Mr. Sewell was placing my case of instruments under the seat, and Mr. Jaffrey had gone up to his room to get me a certain newspaper containing an account of a remarkable shipwreck on the Auckland Islands.  I took the opportunity to thank Mr. Sewell for his courtesies to me, and to express my regret at leaving him and Mr. Jaffrey.

“I have become very much attached to Mr. Jaffrey,” I said; “he is a most interesting person; but that hypothetical boy of his, that son of Miss Mehetabel’s—­”

“Yes, I know!” interrupted Mr. Sewell, testily.  “Fell off a step-ladder and broke his dratted neck.  Eleven year old, wasn’t he?  Always does, jest at that point.  Next week Silas will begin the whole thing over again, if he can get anybody to listen to him.”

“I see.  Our amiable friend is a little queer on that subject.”

Mr. Sewell glanced cautiously over his shoulder, and tapping himself significantly on the forehead, said in a low voice,—­

“Room To Let—­Unfurnished!”

The foregoing selections are copyrighted, and are reprinted by permission of the author, and Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers.

ALEARDO ALEARDI

(1812-1878)

The Italian patriot and poet, Aleardo Aleardi, was born in the village of San Giorgio, near Verona, on November 4th, 1812.  He passed his boyhood on his father’s farm, amid the grand scenery of the valley of the Adige, which deeply impressed itself on his youthful imagination and left its traces in all his verse.  He went to school at Verona, where for his dullness he was nick-named the “mole,” and afterwards he passed on to the University of Padua to study law, apparently to please his father, for in the charming autobiography prefixed to his collected poems he quotes his father as saying:—­“My son, be not enamored of this coquette, Poesy; for with all her airs of a great lady, she will play thee some trick of a faithless grisette.  Choose a good companion, as one might say, for instance the law:  and thou wilt found a family; wilt partake of God’s bounties; wilt be content in life, and die quietly and happily.”  In addition to satisfying his father, the young poet also wrote at Padua his first political poems.  And this brought him into slight conflict with the authorities.  He practiced