Old friends.—­The world has few greater pleasures than that which two friends enjoy in tracing back, at some distant time, those transactions and events through which they have passed together.—­Dr. Johnson.

A rare companion.—­She whom you can treat with unreserved familiarity, at the same time preserving your dignity and her respect, is a rare companion, and her acquaintance should be cultivated.

THINGS OF VALUE.

    What shines and glitters has its birth
      But for the present hour alone;
    The real—­the thing of truth and worth—­
      To all posterity goes down.

    _—­Goethe._

Beethoven in Germany.—­When the German talks of symphonies he means Beethoven; the two names are to him one and indivisible; his joy, his pride.  As Italy has its Naples, France its Revolution, England its Navigation, so Germany has its Beethoven symphonies.  The German forgets in his Beethoven that he has no school of painting; with Beethoven he imagines that he has again won the battles that he lost under Napoleon; he even dares to place him on a level with Shakespeare.—­Robert Schumann.

A new use for A dog.—­A farmer’s daughter in the West of England received a hairy poodle dog from a friend in town.  The unsophisticated damsel wrote back thanking her friend for the present, and saying that she found it very handy, when tied to a stick, to clean windows with.

The Worst of success.—­She that has never known adversity is but half acquainted with others or with herself.  Constant success shows us but one side of the world, for, as it surrounds us with friends who will tell us only our merits, so it silences those enemies from whom alone we can learn our defects.

Rights and duties.—­There is no right without its duties, and no duty without its rights.

MERLE’S CRUSADE.

By Rosa NOUCHETTE Carey, Author of “Aunt Diana,” “For Lilias,” etc.

CHAPTER IV.

MERLE’S last evening at home.

“So it is all settled, Merle.”

“Yes, Aunt Agatha,” I returned, briskly, for she spoke in a lugubrious voice, and as one sad face is enough beside the family hearth, I assumed a tolerably cheerful aspect.  If only Aunt Agatha’s eyes would not look at me so tenderly!

“Poor child!” she sighed; and then, as I remained silent, she continued in a few minutes, “I wish I could reconcile myself more to the idea, but I cannot help feeling a presentiment that you will live to repent this strange step you are taking.”