to herself.  Having arrived at their destination, the officers approached their prisoner, but he was gone, the wife alone remained.  The darkness of the night bad favoured his escape while she feigned to be addressing him, and, having thus defeated the law, joined her spouse, and made the best of their way to America, where the workings of the law of kindness were exemplified in his case.  His character being there generally unknown, he was treated and trusted as an honest man, and he broke not his faith.  The better feelings were called into action; conscientiousness, though long subdued, arose and breathed through his spirit the golden rule of right.

The days in America are never so short in winter as they are in Europe, nor are they so long in summer, and there is always an hour or two of the cool night to be enjoyed ere the hour of rest comes.  Our evening lamp is already lighted, and our circle increased by the presence of the school-mistress.

Although in this country the local government has done much towards the advancement of schools, yet much improvement requires to be made—­not in their simple internal arrangements, for which there is no regular system, but in the more important article of remuneration.  The government allows twenty pounds a year to each school; the proprietors, or those persons who send their children to the school, agreeing to pay the teacher a like sum at least (though in some of the older settled parts of the country from forty to fifty pounds is paid by them); as part payment of this sum providing him with board, &c., &c., and this alone is the evil part of the scheme; this boarding in turn with the proprietors, who keep him a week or a month in proportion to the number of the pupils they send, and to make up their share of the year, for which term he is hired, as his engagement is termed—­an expression how derogatory to the dignity of many a learned dominie?  From this cause the teacher has no home, no depository for his books, which are lost in wandering from place to place; and if he had them, no chance for study:  for the log-house filled with children and wheels is no fit abode for a student.  This boarding system operates badly in many ways.  The nature of the blue nose is still leavened with that dislike of coercive measures inherited from their former countrymen, the Yankees.  It extends to their children, and each little black-eyed urchin, on his wooden bench and dog-eared dilworth in hand, must be treated by his teacher as a free enlightened citizen.  But even without this, where is there in any country a schoolmaster daring enough to use a ratan, or birch rod, to that unruly darling from whose mother he knows his evening reception will be sour looks, and tea tinged with sky-blue, but would not rather let the boy make fox-and-geese instead of, ciphering, say his lesson when he pleased, and have cream and short-cake for his portion.  Another disagreeable thing is, that fond and anxious