wife, and a fond and doating mother.  Those two names, Sybel and Melancthon, had a strange sound in the same household, awaking, as they always did in my dreamy fancy, a train of such differing memories.  Sybel recalling the days of early Rome, the haughty Tarquin and his mysterious prophetess, while Melancthon brought back the “Reformation,” and the best and most pious of its fathers.  In the particular of names, the Americans have a decided “penchant” for those of euphonious and peculiar sound—­they are selected from sacred and profane history, ancient and modern.  To them, however, there is little of meaning attached by those who give them save the sound.  I have known one family reckon among its members a Solon and Solomon, a Hector and Wellington, a Bathsheba and Lucretia; and the two famous Johns, Bunyan and Wesley, have many a name-sake.  These, in their full length, are generally saved for holiday terms, and abbreviations are made for every-day use.  In these they are ingenious in finding the shortest, and Theodore, that sweetest of all names, I have heard curtailed to “Od,” which seems certainly an odd enough cognomen.  Sybel’s bridal portion consisted of a cow and some sheep—­her father’s waggon which brought her home contained some household articles her mother’s care had afforded—­Melancthon had provided a barrel of pork and one of flour, some tea and molasses, that staple commodity in transatlantic housekeeping.  Amongst Sybel’s chattels were a bake-pan and tea-kettle, and thus they commenced the world.  Melancthon has not yet had time to make a gate at his dwelling, and our only mode of entrance must be either by climbing the “fence” or unshipping the “bars,” which form one pannel, and which are placed so as to be readily removed for the passage of a carriage, but from us this will require both time and strength, so at the risk of tearing our dress we will e’en take the fence.  This is a feat which a novice does most clumsily, but which those who are accustomed to it do most gracefully.

As we approach the dwelling, the housewife’s handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight.  Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—–­her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow form of New Brunswick matrons; her dress is home-spun, of her own manufacture, carded and spun by her own hands, coloured with dye stuffs gathered in the woods, woven in a pretty plaid, and neatly made by herself.  This is also the clothing of her husband and children; a bright gingham handkerchief is folded inside her dress, and her rich dark hair is smoothly braided.  In this particular the natives display a good taste—­young women do not enshroud themselves in a cap the day after their marriage, as if glad to be done with the trouble of dressing their hair; and unless from sickness a cap is never worn by any one the least youthful.  The custom