I got to the station just three hours after the train I intended to take had left, and had to wait only two hours for the next train; which was doing pretty well for Virginia.  Possessing my Southside soul in patience, I bought two not very bad cigars for ten cents, and fell to contemplating some eight or nine of the Down-Trodden who were hanging around.  I must say that the Down-Trodden did not appear to have been much flattened by the heel of the Oppressor.  As I gazed, a foolish parody started itself in my idle brain: 

  When the fair land of Bedford
  Was ploughed by the hoof
  Of the ruthless invader—­

There the thing broke down, and—­the events of the night before, the Englishman, the happy Northern family and the thoroughly reconstructed general, suggesting it in some queer cerebral way—­a still more foolish negro song, which I had forgotten for years, popped up in my brain-pan: 

  Lit-tel gal, I give you ninepunce
  Ef you will dance de Haul-back;
  And I kin dance de Haul-back,
  And you kin dance de Haul back,
  And we kin dance de Haul-back.

The relevancy of this utterly absurd thing did not then strike me.  I see it now.  A certain people—­whom I do love with my whole heart, not in spite of their faults, but because of them:  are they not my own?—­have been dancing the Haul-back for many generations, and now, under my own eye and quite perceptibly in the rural parts of Virginia, the dance is coming to an end.  Slowly but surely we are lapsing into Bullo-doodledom, with a momentary preponderance of Bull. Tempora—­do, I entreat you, allow me the use of my solitary dear delightful old bit of Latin—­mutantur; ay! and we mutate with them.  The world moves, and no amount of Haul-back will stay it.

RICHARD B. ELDER.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE WELLESLEY-POLES.

The death was announced a few weeks ago of a lady whose name will awaken a train of recollection in the minds of all who take an interest in English family history.  This was Miss Tylney-Long, sister to the ill-fated Mrs. Tylney-Long-Wellesley-Pole.

The duke of Wellington’s second brother, William, succeeded in 1778 to the large Irish estates of a kinsman, Mr. Pole, and assumed that name in addition to his own.  Mr. Wellesley-Pole, who was eventually created a peer as Lord Maryborough, had a son, who became, on the death of his uncle, the marquis Wellesley, earl of Mornington.  Never had the peerage a more unworthy member.  Starting in life with every advantage, Mr. Wellesley-Pole seemed bent upon showing how effectually he could foil the efforts of Fortune to serve him.  When he reached an age for marriage the greatest heiress of the time was Miss Tylney-Long.  By a succession of failures of male heirs the vast wealth of the family of Child had devolved on this lady, and Mr. Wellesley-Pole