second day out, he rode ahead of the men into Plumb's Wood.

There was no one in the cottage; but he soon discovered the boat drawn up the shore of a little cove, and near it a group of idlers, sitting under the trees. The particular object that made Richard start was a red shawl.

"Just as sure as the world," said he, putting up his glass, "that is Mary Seabray, and I must face the music; for they are getting into the boat. Either she did not go to Chicago," he continued, "or she must have come back here in a balloon, without stopping at New Bolton. I wonder if my friend, the Doctor, has not been giving me all his fatherly advice, lately, for his own particular benefit. I see now why he likes Plumb's Lake."

The boat soon landed, and the red shawl blazed and danced before Richard's eyes so, that he could not keep them from getting moist, as Mary Seabray walked directly up to him—and never before so fascinating.

"Dang it," said Plumb, wiping his eyes, as he looked at the happy lovers, "I believe I'd like to whip Chinny."

Mary's presence at Plumb's Lake was briefly explained. Miss Plumb had driven over to New Bolton for her, arriving there after dark; and they rode back the same evening to a friend's house. Mary told no one where she was going, as she thought it best to let people think that she had gone to Chicago; and they did not arrive at Plumb's until Richard had started for Wright's.

At the Doctor's suggestion, nothing had been said or written to any one in New Bolton about Mary's presence, and Richard was as much surprised as he was delighted to find her there. They walked, and talked, and gathered wildflowers together, and told the old story -always fresh and new to young hearts.

The Doctor, in the plenitude of his power, gave Richard a furlough for two weeks, during which time he and Mary built more air-castles than would cover the prairie from Plumb's to New Bolton.

On the day when his leave of absence expired, Richard found himself in that worldliest of all worldly bodies-a nominating convention-Colonel Seabray against Chinny, for the legislature, and the Colonel triumphant.

Chinny came out of the convention raving. The time had now arrived for him to strike; and he publicly denounced the Colonel as a gambler and murderer.

Many of the delegates were old settlers, of whom Chinny had "taken toll,” in former years, for which they owed him a grudge; and before he could repeat the accusations, five or six great fellows gathered about, and, putting Chinny astride an oak-rail, they rode him to the beach, and gave him a " ducking" in the lake.

There was much loud talk and a great deal of fist-shaking between Duke and Old Bob, leaving the old man in possession of the field, however, because he could quote the Scripture, and Duke couldn't.

As Chinny threatened to "take the law" of his assailant, Colonel Seabray set a back-fire on him, by engaging Richard to commence an action against Chinny for slander. This resulted in a heavy judgment for damages, which stripped him of his New Bolton property.

The Colonel was triumphantly elected that fall; and on the succeeding New Year's Day there was a wedding at his house, then a ride across the prairie, and another wedding at Plumb's, celebrated with as great a variety of genuine fun as could be crowded into the cottage. In fact, Plumb's laugh was so uproarious, that it had to be turned out of doors occasionally for want of room.

From this time on, the shining angel of Happiness sat in Richard's house; and never came the track of wolf to his door.

Early in the spring following his marriage, he was visited by Plumb, who gave him a quit-claim deed of the tract at the outlet of the lake. He was so mysterious about it, that Richard tried to find out why he gave him the deed;

of those secret things for his mind to bother itself with, at listless intervals, like an unbroken marrow-bone in a bear's cage, which is gnawed and pawed when there is nothing else to gnaw.

Richard deeded it to Mary and Mrs. Blodgett, who laid out a town on it, while the Doctor and Richard ordered a new survey made of Globe City, by an engineer with geological tendencies.

He reported: "Two feet of water, three inches of pollywogs, four inches of clear mud-turtle, then grass-roots, and bottomless mud."

This mud was found to be peat of the finest quality, which could be made into fuel for locomotives. The only difficulty seemed to be, that it took ten pounds of coal to heat up and ignite one pound of peat. The engineer reported that some of the water could be pressed out of the peat by a machine; but as it would cost about a dollar a pound to do it, that scheme was abandoned, and attention turned to Plumb's Lake, where population began to in

taining four hard-boiled eggs, covered with fly-specks; some candy; crackers; sour beer; apple-pies, ornamented like the eggs; a bottle of pepper-sauce, as strong as John Brown's soul; and the grim relic of a late engineer of a wheelbarrow, smoking a black pipe,

In widowy meditation, fancy free.

A grist-mill was the next accession. This was run by steam, which so confounded and overwhelmed the windmill, that it committed suicide, one stormy night, and was discovered, next morning, hanging lifeless, and head downward, from the top of the tank.

Dwelling-houses soon began to gather about the mill; and at last there was a public square and a court-house. Globe City is now a county-seat, and flourishing; an honor to its founders, although, according to the original map hanging in the register's office, the limits of the old city contain no structure but the water-tank aforesaid.

Old Bob wrestled with some pretty tough sinners, and threw them; but he took one gird that was too much for him. He married a woman who proved, on close acquaintance, to be an Episcopalian; and ever after that he led a melancholy life, until he took a gird at Death, and was thrown in his tracks. Poor old boy! He had a large funeral -that's one consolation.

Chinny lives at Turkey Bend-poor, unmarried, and unhappy. He receives a season-pass, every year, over the railway, signed by Blodgett, president, and countersigned by French, attorney. The pass is charged to the coal-account; because, as the Doctor says, it is a kindness which heaps coals of fire on the head of an enemy, and proves, also, that this corporation has a soul-lawyers, legislators, and stockjobbers to the contrary notwithstanding.

Colonel Seabray sleeps in the beautiful cemetery on Plumb's Lake, under a very large monument, with a brief epitaph, commemorating his virtues ; wherein it is not written that he was one of The Founders of Globe City.

THE traveller who, after painful climbing, has reached the summit of a hill, often forgets to enjoy the wide prospect whose anticipation had allured him thither. After one hasty glance over the far-reaching plains, and the valleys undulating to the distant horizon, he throws himself upon the ground, upon just such grass and mosses as might be found in the orchard by his father's door, and is presently absorbed in contemplation of ants hurrying back and forth to populous hillocks, of beetles rolling huge balls of clay, of ladybugs swinging on long timothy-blades, and of bees humming in the fragrant clover, -of all the infinitesimal, murmuring, multitudinous life, which, to the attentive eye and ear, dilates to roaring dimensions.

So the traveller to a great city, though he have resolved to study the whole with as much desperate energy as he once may have expended in mastering "Rollin's History," often ends by drifting into some side-eddy, drifting and lodging there, and taking all his observations from an area of life about as big as a nutshell. Happy if he learn to comprehend that; for however small the surface, the depth is infinite, and reaches to the very roots that sustain the whole big city itself.

In Paris is no lack of side-eddies to bear away the wandering observer. There is English Paris of the Rue Rivoli and St. Honoré, where English dowagers, in impossible bonnets, jostle the dainty Parisian dames, and meek, manydaughtered English families, meander on daily constitutionals. There is American Paris of the Grand Hotel, the Arc de Triomphe, and the Boulevard Malesherbes, where dashing American belles prepare for foreign conquests, and lightbearded Westerners vote the Emperor an infernal humbug (and pour cause). There is Parisian Paris of the Boulevard

des Italiens, where dandies and petits crevés lounge before cafés from morning till night, getting shot, occasionally, at Tortoni's, when a coup d'état comes that way. And the Faubourg St. Germain, with its slim relics of a vanishing aristocracy, and its intrusion of a new, whose rank is guaranteed by no surer warrant than bits of red ribbon, indicating the Legion of Honor, and the favors of the Bonaparte dynasty. And the Faubourg St. Antoine, with its dreadful capacity for forty-eight hours' fighting on a stretch, as at the time when the bell of St. Germain Auxerrois tolled the signal for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew; or, later, when the last Bourbon was invited to retire from the palace of his ancestors. And there is the Quarter of the Batignolles, where fiery-tongued artisans congregate for the spread of terrible Socialistic ideas, and whence issue subscriptions for statues to Voltaire and other Iconoclasts. And the Place du Trône, also thronged by Baron Haussmann's laborers, but of a quieter species, and innocent of Socialism or Voltaire-who work patiently three hundred and sixty-three days in the year, and are satisfied with the compensation of Merry-Andrew shows on Easter Sunday and a special supply of fireworks at the Emperor's fête. But above all, older than all, dearer than all, more characteristic than all, there is the Latin Quarter, with the Pantheon and the Sorbonne, with the Odeon and the Luxembourg, with the École de Droit and the Ecole de Médecine, with its charmingly narrow, tortuous streets and its one rakish-looking boulevard, with its students and grisettes, its cheap restaurants and second-hand bookstalls, its libraries and its reading-rooms, its flavor of youth and remoteness and independence, and all its gay, studious, insouciant existence. In the heart of the Latin Quarter, half-way between the

Louvre and the Luxembourg, between the Institute and the École de Médecine, lies a little street, that, in itself, is an epitome of the entire region. It is the Passage du Commerce, that runs from the Rue de l'École to the Rue St. André des Arts, parallel to the Ancienne Comédie, like a Mississippi cut-off, and invested with much the same charm as renders those satellites of the big river so delicious; and the main institution of the Passage is a famous Salon de Lecture, the Ancienne Maison Blosse, well known to several generations of students. Here they cram hopefully for the examinations; hither they retreat dolefully when they have been plucked, to prepare afresh for the ordeal. Here they dream day-dreams, in which visions of past balls and future internats, of coveted microscopes, and actual pawnbrokers' tickets, visions of fame and love and life, mingle in pleasant confusion, and dance airily over the ink-stained tables, before eyes that are supposed to be absorbed upon expositions of the Droit des Gens, or the knottiest problems of pneumonia.

Two long, low rooms, and a smaller intermediate for newspapers-all lined with old books, blackened by time and much service. Here are numerous shelves, occupied by Sirey's Jurisprudence-a perfectly exhaustive work, to judge by its mass, and calculated to make all lesser treatises blush at their own insignificance. Above, the Code Napoléon perpetuates the glory of its all-meddling creator, while opposite, in serene indifference to parvenue legislation, the Pandects of Justinian hold their own across a dozen centuries. Bound volumes of the Journal des Tribunaux fraternize in professional courtesy with the Archives de Médecine. Bouillaud's treatises continue to proclaim the lancet as the only salvation of man, with all the heroic truculence distinguishing the aged professor at La Charité. There are books that have created awful fame for their authors, the writings of Dessault and Dupuytren, of Louis and Broussais and Magendie, and the immortal Anatomie of Bichat. At

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appropriate intervals a small current of modern volumes filters into the library, monographs written by newly-elected professors, upon whose theories, whoso would not be plucked, must absolutely take care to post himself. There are newspapers also, for the occasional relaxation of studious brains. But, after all, novelty is never very prominent, and never succeeds in overpowering the general air of well-seasoned age proper to the establishment.

A library that is not old, is not worth a Confederate bond. In the Rue Richelieu has just been built a gorgeous extension of the Bibliothèque Impériale, all spick and span new, with lofty skylights, and numbered desks, and much pink and blue and gilding, and the ubiquitous "In regnum Napoleonis III. constructu,” etc., posted in conspicuous letters. The place is as handsome and intolerable as a new beaver, as unvitalized as a transplanted clothes-pole, as devoid of sanctity as a newly-created religion. It will not be fit to go into for about a century. But this dear, dark old Maison Blosse, with its open fireplaces for tickling the cold in winter, and its unshaded windows through which the sun streams unmercifully in summer, its assortment of all the books you have ever read, and absence of all those you ever want to read, its odd, big-nosed garçon, fifteen hundred times as accommodating and efficient as the liveried officials in the other place,-why, for comfort and cosiness, and ease and dreamy delight, the Bibliothèque Impériale cannot hold a candle to the Maison Blosse, Passage du Commerce.

The habitués of the Maison are as much at home there as if in their own libraries, supposing that those prospective institutions were already in existence. They are at liberty to ransack all the shelves; to leave their note-books in all the cupboards; to smoke up-stairs in a room reserved for the purpose; to talk, though in subdued voices; to fall asleep on the baize-tables; to pull off their coats and sit in their shirt-sleeves; to go and come when they choose; to make appointments and receive letters; to

ness of their lives at this favorite headquarters. They live here from eight in the morning till eleven at night, with occasional intermissions. But there is a marked difference in the students who come on week-days, and those reserved for Sundays only. From Monday to Saturday the salon is thronged by the well-to-do youth, possessed of reliable governors at home in the provinces, who send up yearly allowances of three thousand francs, and ask no questions, so long as the Interne Concours and the examinations are safely pulled through. On Sundays these happy fellows hie them to the Bois de Boulogne or other less wholesome places of amusement, Their seats are occupied by their poorer comrades, who have more at stake in their work, and therefore work harder; and by certain others who only come on Sundays. These last probably work all the week at some distasteful employment; they are school-ushers, bookkeepers, who have sought a humble situation in which to keep body and soul together, while engaged in scraping up some divine morsels of knowledge; and have found that the daily drudgery absorbs so much time as to defeat the purpose for which it was undertaken.

Hard it is when life leaves no margin beyond the dull task of getting a living! -hard for these thirsty souls, continually in the presence of books, which are as food and drink to them, and from which remorseless labor and poverty shut them out! One day they have, one glimpse of Paradise, from week to week. They come to the reading-room at eight in the morning; they seize their books with famished eagerness, and never relax their grasp till the salon closes at night. One of these Sunday students I have especially noticed, he is so absorbed, so forlorn. Tall, pale, and gaunt, with hollow chest, hollow checks, and unwholesome earthy complexion; hair worn away prematurely by the ceaseless plodding of an unsatisfied brain; reddened eyes, betraying many hours uselessly stolen from sleep,

was over, now so faded and weak that they can scarcely sustain the work of the one priceless day; a face to which childhood and youth seem always to have been unfamiliar, and which will never ripen into the serenity of age; for he will die, the poor seeker, at the very moment that his feet seem to touch the rainbow of promise. The will-o'-thewisp that now cheers and lures on his desperate hope is the flickering flame of his own life, about to be extinguished. It seems to advance towards heaven, because it is escaping from earth; it leads the way boldly towards a delicious mirage, formed by exhalations rising from an open grave.

Another among these weekly visitors is a limp, elderly, unshaven man, with cheeks flabby and hairy like an overripe gooseberry, with helpless mouth and chin supported by a chaotic cravat, and coat and beaver in the last spasms of shabby gentility. This old gentleman has outlived all feverish anxiety, for he has long ago given up the attempt to succeed in any thing. Hence, he is no longer tormented by the dreadful sense of hurry that pursues his younger companions. He calculates his leisure, not from the time that lies before him, but from that which is behind, and feels that he has more than enough to accomplish the little nucleus of real business that slips about loosely in the folds of his skinny existence, like a shrivelled kernel in a shell. So he sits and writes with a calm, disengaged air, holding himself bolt upright and a good way from the paper. And this gradually covers itself with characters like copper-plate, fine, precise, and graceful, of which each letter seems to disown the limp fingers that formed it, and the soiled shirt-sleeve that menaced the first moments of its existence. To students like these, the Passage du Commerce has no other interest,-what do I say?— Paris has no other boundary than that belonging to the twelve square inches of table before them. But the others, more at their ease, have leisure to survey the world out of doors, as it defiles