alike—­at various outbreaks of his generosity.  He had the queerest way of bestowing favors I almost ever saw.  When he wished to make a boy a present, he shoved it roughly into his pocket, and then started off as if the house was on fire.  What brought up the subject I do not now remember, but that evening Mrs. Morton persisted in talking about Clara Hague.  She spoke of their childhood, of the old homestead, of the nutting, the apple-picking, the cider-making, and the hundred other occupations and amusements of their young life.

She had a vivid power of description, and a charming simplicity in her choice of words, that entertained even me; but I could see Mr. Redfield was troubled.  He moved restlessly on the lounge, and once drew a shawl over his face.  At last she touched on the shoestore, its doleful decay and downfall, and the years the unhappy woman had struggled on.  At this he started to go; but there was something in her manner that detained him.  Her tone had been light and chatty before; and, though she spoke with proper gravity, it was sprightly rather than earnest.  I did not notice any striking change; and yet it seemed suddenly to assume the gentle impressiveness one sometimes fancies we should hear from the pulpit.

“Whatever be her troubles, Clara has been a good sister to you.  You were the youngest; and a puny little fellow you were then, with all your greatness.  Many and many a time, in your quarrels with other boys, have I seen her get into no end of disgrace for defending you.  Do you remember that old log school-house, John? and our dinners under the trees?  What baskets of berries and bags of nuts we gathered in those woods!  Do you remember the little run we used to cross, and the fish you caught in the pool?

“And oh, John! do you remember that day we started home when it rained?  You had been sick, and commenced to cry.  We got under a big tree; but it was November; the leaves had all blown down, and the rain beat through the branches.  What disconsolate little people we were!  And when you sat down on a flat stone, and declared you’d stay there and die, don’t you remember how Clara went out in the bushes, and, taking off her little flannel petticoat, put it around your shoulders for a cloak?”

The strong man quivered; his face convulsed, and the hot tears started into his eyes.

“Yes! I’ll be hanged if I don’t!”

He clutched up his hat, and was gone in an instant, and the two women, woman-like, stood sobbing in each other’s arms.

The Air.

The thousand-and-one young gentlemen in blue neck-ties, who for a twelvemonth, in frantic strains, varying from basso profundo to piping tenor, had proclaimed their entire willingness to “mourir pour la patrie,” were engrossed at their shops; innumerable fascinating trimmers of bonnets, who, like poor little “Dora,” religiously believed the chief end of man consisted in “dancing continually