“Did I say I loved you, Mary?” enquired the author, in a state of bewilderment.  “Never mind!  I say now that I love you with all my heart and soul, and ten times as much when awake, as when I was dreaming!  Will you marry me?”

Mary only blushed rosier then ever.  But she and the author always thereafter took their tea cosily together.

As for the romance, the author took it and threw it into the fire, which roared a genial acknowledgment, and in five minutes had made itself thoroughly acquainted with every page.  There remained a bunch of black flakes, and in the center one soft glowing spark, which lingered a long while ere finally taking its flight up the chimney.  It was the description of the little country girl.

“The next book I write shall be all about you,” the author used to say to his wife, in after years, as they sat together before the fire-place, and watched the bright blaze roar up the chimney.

—­Julian Hawthorne.

A FROSTY DAY.

Grass afield wears silver thatch,
Palings all are edged with rime,
Frost-flowers pattern round the latch,
Cloud nor breeze dissolve the clime;

  When the waves are solid floor,
    And the clods are iron-bound,
  And the boughs are crystall’d hoar,
    And the red leaf nail’d aground.

  When the fieldfare’s flight is slow,
    And a rosy vapor rim,
  Now the sun is small and low,
    Belts along the region dim.

  When the ice-crack flies and flaws,
    Shore to shore, with thunder shock,
  Deeper than the evening daws,
    Clearer than the village clock.

  When the rusty blackbird strips,
    Bunch by bunch, the coral thorn,
  And the pale day-crescent dips,
    New to heaven a slender horn.

—­John Leicester Warren.

* * * * *

Those who come last seem to enter with advantage.  They are born to the wealth of antiquity.  The materials for judging are prepared, and the foundations of knowledge are laid to their hands.  Besides, if the point was tried by antiquity, antiquity would lose it; for the present age is really the oldest, and has the largest experience to plead.—­Jeremy Collier.

[Illustration:  COMING OUT OF SCHOOL.—­VAUTIER.]

COMING OUT OF SCHOOL.

If there be any happier event in the life of a child than coming out of school, few children are wise enough to discover it.  We do not refer to children who go to school unwillingly—­thoughtless wights—­whose heads are full of play, and whose hands are prone to mischief:—­that these should delight in escaping the restraints of the school-room, and the eye of its watchful master, is a matter of course.  We refer to children generally, the good and the bad, the studious and the idle, in short, to all who belong to the genus Boy.  Perhaps we should include