verily believe that not above one in ten of the mar-compensation whatever, into the hornet's nest of riages which take place in Scotland could be legally nurses, doctors and dress makers' and milliners' proved, except by litigation before a supreme court, bills? Let us try if it be not possible to live otherin which collateral evidence might possibly be pro-wise." Thus, alas! it is from poverty that the duced. A register of burials is kept at every bury-greatest number doom themselves to celibacy, and, ing ground, but no register of deaths. Thus, in perhaps are thus even more unhappy than those of Scotland, the whole matter of registration may be their brethren who have ventured on matrimony. It considered as on the worst possible footing.

is true that the single Clerk is free, and proud of his liberty till he is forty. He dines at the table-d'hote at thirty-two sons, frequents the public walks, concerts, theatres, bals champetres, and otherwise, and is From "Heads of the French, by themselves." occasionally animated by the fleeting excitement of an adventurous existence. But gradually the scene THE GOVERNMENT CLERK. changes: his hair turns grey, he numbers forty-five IN France there are as many varieties of Clerks as winters, and the age of illusions passes away, never naturalists ascribe to the Lepidoptera; but notwith- to return. Concerts, balls and plays, amuse him no standing the thousand shades of difference, there are longer. What is to be done? To what innocent amongst them, to the keen and careful observer, passion can he devote himself? How must he fill great points of resemblance and striking analogies; up his long summer mornings, interminable winter in whatever grade of administrative department they evenings? important questions these! Dining at may be engaged, they have all in view one single tables-d'hote is moreover become insufferable to him. object, one fixed idea, one common destiny. He can no longer endure to meet each day new faces, Let us explain in a few words the routine of the which he may never see again. Then if he comClerk's life. At thirty, having a salary of eighteen pare the flavourless soup, and the harmless liquids hundred francs a-year, he marries an heiress with an in which swim the meats at his table d'hote, with income of six or eight hundred more; he takes a the delicious dishes and sauces so exquisitely prelodging, which must not cost him more than four pared in private families, what a difference suggests hundred francs, at the farther extremity of the itself to his mind! From this time a great change Marais, or in one of the suburbs of Paris. He walks takes place in the single Clerk's life; he renounces every day five miles to go to his office, and there fill the world, its amusements, its brilliant assemblies, up registers, copy letters, sort and arrange heaps of to study a science, or devote himself to some quiet papers, deliver game-licences, passports, receipts, mania. He takes either to ornithology or numisand warrants-or, again, to register those who arrive matics, collects minerals, classes butterflies or shells, and those who depart; to make out the conscription- stuffs to the best of his abilities all his neighbours' lists; to plan a bridge for this town, a school for the dead canary birds, and subscribes to five or six other, and a cavalry-barrack for a third; to circulate illustrated editions. He ends by engaging a housethe thoughts and stories originating in Paris over keeper, takes his meals at home, and settles down France and Europe; from his leathern arm-chair for life as comfortably as he can.

to keep a vigilant watch on the motions of such a There are shades in the varieties of Clerks which gambler or such a criminal, or the progress of such to dwell upon would be useless, their designation a conspiracy, and what not besides. Others must being a sufficient description. Such are the idler, have an eye on the thirty-eight thousand French who contrives to work only an hour a-day; the boroughs, to ascertain and provide for their wants, plodder, who is scrupulous of losing an instant; their wishes, their opinions, or all that relates to the malade imaginaire, who for thirty years fancies politics, trade, the public good, religion, morals, the himself threatened with serious illness, expecting preservation of health, and a thousand other things. which he solicits frequent leaves of absence, and is Such are the Clerk's multifarious duties six hours bled, takes medicine regularly every fortnight; the of six days of the week. Sunday comes, on which joker, who is always propounding riddles and playday he does not rise till ten, and shaves much later, ing tricks; the flatterer, who is some times nicknamed than usual. Towards three he quits his dull suburb by his fellow clerks "the Spy," &c. &c. The Pluraand starts with his wife for Paris, were they waik list demands a sketch to himself. two hours for an appetite, and dine for two franes at The hours of business in a public office are usually Richefeu's, on perdrix aux choux, a salade de homard, from ten to four o'clock. As long as the Clerk rea sole au gratin, with a meringue a la creme for a mains unmarried, he sleeps or otherwise idles away desert. After dinner, they go in summer to the the eighteen hours' leisure afforded him by governChamps Elysees, and in winter to Musard's Concert, ment; but when he marries and children bring At half-past ten they walk home, where they scarcely poverty, he tries to make the best possible use of his arrive before midnight-the poor wife almost dead spare time. Then, indeed, his life is the most laborwith fatigue-and thus ends the day. ious and varied imaginable. It is hardly six o'clock

The class of unmarried Clerks is much more when he is already up and copying deeds and abnumerous than that of the married. "What is the stracts for solicitors; he colours prints, gives lessons use of marrying ?" say they: "If we marry for love, in drawing, or on the French Horn, or perhaps writes what misery not to be able to offer to the woman of articles for the pictorial magazines, or scribbles our choice the thousand amusements, the charming novels or compilations at fifty francs a volume, acnothings, the jewels, ribbons, and flowers, which go cording to his intelligence or inclination. From ten for so much to constitute female happiness! If, on till four he is at his office. His dinner over, at six the contrary, we marry, like too many others, merely the betakes himself to some theatre on the Boulevard, for convenience, way dust ourselves, without any to play the bassoon; or, if he is no musician, he

employs his evening in keeping the books of some sometimes destroying whole fields in a night; a cirtailor, grocer, or any other shopkeeper in his neigh- cumstance which gave rise to a saying once current bourhood. Such is his daily existence till eleven in the western hemisphere, that the planters of indigo o'clock. Poor victim to marriage!-what industry! go to bed rich, and rise in the morning beggars. At-what self-denial! Setting these aside-thanks to tention has been turned more to the most efficient his unremitting exertions for seventeen hours per methods of destroying the animal, than to turning it diem-the pluralist Clerk succeeds in providing food to some useful purpose. Yet this might easily be and clothing for his wife and children, and adds done, for in a certain state it produces a substance eight or nine hundred francs to his Government salary which appears to be equal, if not superior, to the of fifteen hundred. finest silk or cotton. It is of the most dazzling [The Government Clerk at length retires from the whiteness and the greatest purity, answering the desk.] He has served thirty years: the period for purposes of lint in the hospitals of the negroes, when his retirement has arrived; but alas! here again are silk and vegetable cotton serve only to inflame new grievances and fresh disappointment. In his wounds, by the asperities of their filaments. We youth, the Clerk is ever pining for the day when he abridge an account of it from Burt's "Observations shall retire, break his chain, recover his liberty, his on the Curiosities of Nature," a very bad title for an independence, his freedom of speech, &c. When ingenious book.

the time really arrives his language is no longer the The capada worm, or insect fly-carrier, is prosame. He resembles the Woodman in the presence duced, like the silk-worm, from the eggs which its of Death, in the fable. "What already!" cries he. mother scatters every where, after she has under"What tyrannical injustice! I have scarcely began gone her metamorphosis into a white butterfly. It to reap the fruits of my labour, and now I am dis- begins to live at the end of July, and at its birth is missed and with the stroke of a pen goes the one- arrayed in a robe of the most brilliant and variegated half of my income! I who took so much pleasure colours. When on the point of undergoing its metain framing reports, auditing accounts, writing dis-morphosis in August, it throws off this superb livery, patches, &c. What is to become of me?" The and puts on another of an admirable sea-green hue. Clerk then invariably forgets that there was a time This fundamental colour reflects all its various when he was indignant that the old should bar the shades, according to the different undulations of the road to the young. However, retire he must, wil-animal, and the different accidents of light; but this lingly or unwillingly, in spite of all appeal; and if new decoration announces the approach of a period his children are all provided for, and there is nothing when it is doomed to undergo great tortures. It is to keep him in Paris, he usually retires to some immediately assailed by a swarm of ichneumon flies, small town in its immediate vicinity, and not unfre- one of which inserts itself into each of the pores of quently lives till he is eighty-happy when his its body, not an opening being left unoccupied. All Savings have enabled him to purchase an acre of its struggles to get free of its tormentors are in vain. land, and subscribe, conjointly with the mayor of These flies, which are so small that they can only the place, to the oldest of the opposition newspapers. be studied by the microscope, drive their stings into There are some sad exceptions to this resignation the skin of their victim, over the whole extent of its and longevity. "Have you heard the news?" says sometimes one of the clerks, as he mends his pen, to his comrades in the office. "Have you heard the news of old A- our pensioned head clerk ?"

No. What of him ""

back and sides. Afterwards, and all at the same moment, they slip their eggs into the bottom of the wounds which they have inflicted. No sooner is the operation performed, than the ichneumon flies disappear, and the patient remains for an hour in a drowsy "You know that he retired to the environs of and even motionless state, out of which it awakens to Chantilly, at the entrance of a charming village, feed with its former voracity. It then appears much surrounded by magnificent vegetation; but it was larger, and its size increases every day. Its green the verdure of his papers, not that of the fields, that colour assumes a deeper hue, and the tints produced he cared for, poor man! As soon as he had ceased by the reflection of the light are more strongly markto see them about him, his health began to decline; ed. About a fortnight after the worm has been enhe lingered six months; he who used to be so contented and happy in his office! His spirits entirely forsook him: a slow disease gradually undermined his health, and wore his body to a shadow." "And how is he now ?"

cumbered with this factitious pregnancy, the prospect of a numerous progeny begins to be apparent. By the aid of a microscope the eggs may be seen hatching in the body of the animal; and as they are all produced at the same instant, a single glance reveals the capada worm covered with a living robe of ichneumon flies. They issue from every pore, all the body being covered with them, only the top of the head appearing bare. Its colour then changes to dirty white, and the little worms assume a black appearance to the eye, although their true colour is a deep brown. This operation lasts about an hour, and it is followed by another, which is not much more protracted, but still more singular.

In an age when fine loaves of bread are manufactured from sawdust, and superior wine from rhubarb and turnips, it is surprising that but little advantage Immediately that the ichneumon worms are hatchhas been taken of the natural production of an insect ed, without quitting the spot where they separate very common and much dreaded in the West Indies, themselves from the eggs, they yield a liquid gum, the Capada worm or insect fly-carrier. It is a dead-which becomes solid on exposure to the air. At the ly enemy to the indigo and capada plantations, same time, and by a simultaneous motion, they ele

From Chambers' Edinburgh Journal.

OFFICER.

vate themselves on their lower extremities, shake | their heads and one half of their bodies, and swing themselves in every direction. And now they commence a very curious operation. Each of these ani- RECOLLECTIONS OF CALCUTTA, BY AN malcules works himself a small and almost imperceptible cocoon in the shape of an egg, in which he wraps himself up. The formation of these cocoons THE Fort of Calcutta is one of the most splendid occupies only about two hours, and myriads of them and convenient military establishments to be found in being crowded close together, form a white robe, any quarter of the globe. It is very spacious, and, with which the capada worm appears elegantly and like the Tower of London, resembles a small town comfortably clothed; but while they are thus busily rather than a mere citadel, consisting of various arraying him in his new attire, he remains appa- streets and squares adapted for different purposes. rently unconscious of their assiduities-he is then in On all sides it is guarded by a high and strongly a state of insect paralysis. As soon as this covering built rampart, which is surrounded by a broad fosse, has been completed, and the little artists who wove over which are placed drawbridges, leading to the it had retired to their cells, the worm endeavours to principal gateways. On our first arrival here, after rid himself of his officious guests, and of the robe due admiration of the noble fortress itself, I was parwhich contains them, but he does not succeed in the ticularly amused by observing a tribe of extraordiattempt without the greatest efforts. At length henary looking birds of the crane species, called Adjucontrives to get rid of the encumbrance; but instead tants, which are quite domestic, but of strange unof his former fat and shining appearance, he presents sightly appearance, and which stand erect, like the all the decrepitude of extreme old age. He is flac- penguin, in military fashion, rank and file, remaining cid and dull; his skin is wrinkled and dirty; and, as silent, motionless, and orderly, as a regiment in short, symptoms of approaching dissolution begin drawn up on parade. These curious creatures are so to show themselves. He still makes a desperate at well drilled, and so well practised in soldierly habits, tempt to gnaw a few leaves, but he no longer devours that they never move the body, nor even the head, to them with that voracity which indicates a vigorous the left or right as you pass by them, but seem fixed constitution. Shortly afterwards he passes into the as statues, and are generally to be seen surrounding state of a chrysalis, and in giving life to thousands of the green square enclosure in front of the barracks, eggs, he relinquishes his own. The cotton pro- where they remain in a state of ruminative apathy duced in this remarkable manner may be used with- under the full blaze of the mid-day sun, until the out any preparatory process, as soon as the flies soldier's dinner-drum begins to beat. Then are they have quitted the cocoons, which is generally eight all in motion in an instant, scampering off in doubleor ten days after their seclusion. Indeed, there is quick time to the men's barracks, where a scene of no need for the precautions which the silk-worm re-great drollery usually ensues. They are most ravenquires, the robe which covers the fly-carrier being ous creatures, and provided with an enormously long worked every where so perfectly well, and in such and formidable bill, as well as with a large capacious abundance, that in less than two hours the quantity bag, which hangs down from their throat to their of one hundred pints has been collected." This long lanky legs. These curious birds, after all, highly interesting animal certainly deserves some though by no means an ornament to the fort, are as attention, for we are not aware that any has been useful as they are amusing, being literally and truly given to it, except in so far as its destruction was its scavengers. They carry off all the offal and refuse concerned, We know not that experiments have thrown out about its precincts, and to them, and a been made to weave this silky substance into a wear- host of assistant crows, who also frequent the loable tissue, but if the description which we have cality, the inmates are indebted for the admirable given above be correct (and there is no reason to cleanliness, and consequently much of the healthi-, doubt but it is,) there seems no obstacle to its being ness, of the place. These crows live on good terms, used for this purpose. for the most part, with the adjutants; but sometimes We may here notice a singular fact, established one of the latter species is provoked out of its apathy by Dr. Mitchell of New York, that vegetable fungi by some mischievous encroachment on the part of the grow on the bodies of living insects. He states that lesser birds, and gulps down the offending crow in these vegetable productions are not peculiar to one an instant, feathers, bones, beak, claws, and all. insect, but are to be found on the bodies of the wasp, This is a feat which the adjutant can execute with sphynx, and others; that the bodies of insects nour- the greatest ease.

ish more than one species of vegetable fungi; that The fort is often the scene of animated festivity, some of these parasitical plants begin their works of from the presence of native jugglers, renowned for annoyance, like the larvae of the ichneumon, in the their surprising skill and dexterity. The performbody of the living insect, and continue it till the ani- ances of these people have been so often described, mal is killed by its destructive operations; that these that I shall only advert to one piece of jugglery mixed associations of vegetable with animal life are which was practised upon myself, and which is cunot prone to rapid putrefaction, but remain long rious from bearing a strong resemblance to the feats enough to be collected by naturalists, and become the recorded in sacred history as having been performed objects of scientific investigation. Dr. Mitchell by the Egyptian magicians. Indeed, as it is well seems to be of opinion that vegetable fungi in attach-known that the Hindoo tricks have been handed ing to the insect class of animals, perform an impor- down from the most distant ages, from father to son, tant purpose in the economy of nature, by preventing there is little wonder that such a similarity should the inordinate increase of such animals. exist. The particular trick alluded to consisted in

the apparent conversion of a small brass coin into a hope to the hopeless, joy to the joyless; the white snake. The juggler gave me the coin to hold, and healing, wings of a good angel hovering over us then seated himself, about five yards from me, on a when our hearts are shorn to the very quick by unsmall rug, from which he never attempted to move kindness or neglect. The gist of every fairy tale is during the whole performance. I showed the coin the triumph of the weak over the strong; an overto several persons who were close beside me on a ruling principle of justice and mercy, which will in form in front of the juggler. At a sign from him, I the end set all things right, and so far they are full not only grasped the coin firmly in my right hand, of truth. But there is another peculiarity of this but, covering that hand with equal tightness with my delightful old literature, which is cruelly unjust. left, I enclosed them both as firmly as I could be- Take the beginning of any one of them, and you have tween my knees. Of course I was positively certain it on the very threshold of the story" There was that the small coin was within my fists. The jug- once upon a time, a woman, and she had three daughgler then began a sort of incantation, accompanied ters; the elder was crooked and ugly, and proud and by a monotonous and discordant kind of recitative, envious;" so was also the second, but in a less and repeating the words "Ram Sammee" during degree; upon the youngest, on the contrary, is some minutes. He then suddenly stopped, and, still lavished every virtue, and every endowment of perkeeping his seat, made a quick motion with his right son and mind: she is beautiful as the lily of June; hand, as if throwing something at me, and giving at humble, and patient and gentle. She is subjected the same time a puff with his mouth. At that in- to every conceivable ignominy; she is the servant stant I felt my hand suddenly distend, and become of her ill-favoured seniors; she washes in water, partly open, while I experienced a sensation as if a while they wash in wine; she wears hempen garcold ball of dough, or some such soft substance, was ments, while they are clothed as princesses; she is now between my palms. I started to my feet in as- made to perform the most menial household work, tonishment, and also to the astonishment of others, while they career about in coaches covered with gold and, unclenching my fists, found there no coin, but, and silver. Such is the established distributions of to my horror, a young living snake-a cobra-di-ca- virtues and vices in every fairy-tale family. In real pello-folded roundly up. I threw it instantly to life, the reverse of this is often much nearer the the ground, as if already bit by the deadly reptile, truth. Elder sisters, and especially those who rewhich began immediately to crawl along the ground, main single, are oftener concentrations of the virtues; to the amaze and alarm of all present. But the jug- and herein is it that our dear old fairy tales are so gler now got up, caught hold of the snake, and dis- grievously in error.

played its length, which was nearly two feet. He I remember, when a child, revelling in that nursery then took it cautiously by the tail, and, opening his literature, bound up in thin square tomes gilded on own mouth to its utmost width, let the head of the the outside, and decorated with compartments of snake drop into it, and commenced deliberately to embossed orange and purple and vermillion, as bright swallow the animal, till the end of the tail only was as the very gems of Aladin's palace, types and synvisible; then, making a sudden gulp, the whole of bols of the fairy tale within-1 remember even then the snake was apparently swallowed. After this the being conscious how false this allotment of virtues juggler came up to the spectators, and opening his and vices was, for our own fireside gave the lie to it. mouth wide, permitted us to look into his throat; but Who was it that read with an untiring patience no snake or snake-tail was to be seen. It was seem- evening after evening, and morning after morning, ingly down his throat altogether. the very fairy tales which all commemorated a cross,

was

During the remainder of the performances, we never ungentle, elder sister? Who was it that laid aside saw this snake again, nor did the juggler profess his her own book or work to dress the doll, or draw the ability to make it re-appear. But he performed picture, or cut the paper-figures, or play at fox and another snake-trick which surprised us much. He goose, but that same gentle and patient and loving took from a bag another living cobra-di-capello, and elder sister! And it was ever so. The younger walking into the centre of the room, enclosed it in ones grew up taller and fairer, and with divers enhis hands, in a folded state. He waved or shook dowments of grace and beauty; each with his or her them for some time in this condition, and then open- peculiar talent or characteristic; this one ed his fists, when, behold! the large cobra was gone, musical, that was a genius in painting, that was meand in its place were several small ones, which fell taphysical, and this was a wit. All were self-enon the floor, and began to move about. grossed, and each was more or less selfish, inasmuch as each was seeking for admiration even at the expense of the others: but Letitia, or Letty, as she was always called, darker complexioned, with no one master faculty of mind, with no showy accomplishment, was the same infatigable, loving, helping being that she had ever been. She was as the

SINGLE SISTERS.

BY MARY HOWITT.

I AM Very fond of fairy tales, and I like none better axle of the wheel; all centred in her; but, inthan that old-fashioned one of Cinderella. Even dividually, all diverged farther and farther apart children, who never read the moral of fables, whether from each other.

in prose or verse, feel the moral of this; the good Letty, was predestined to be an old maid; to be providence which, in the guise of the fairy-god- the single sister of the family. "Miss-,"every mother, sent forth the pumpkin coach and the six body said, " never will be married; she is an old harnessed mice to convey the despised and maltreated maid altogether; she is unlike the rest of the weak one to enjoy pleasures which her persecutors family: she might not belong to them!" And so it had forbidden her. There is a deep moral in it; was. Letty was decidedly plain; the family had

improved in good looks as it increased in numbers. tale, giving in her homely practice the delightful It often is so in large families. Many causes con- proof that elder sisters might be the very kindest spire to make the early lot and life of the eldest and most self-forgetting of human beings, spite of all child frequently less happy, less favoured than those that was written to the contrary; from the very Saturof its successors. Perhaps the parents are in less day night, when she undertook to wash the younger prosperous circumstances, and its early childhood ones with her own soft hands, that we might not be has experienced privations which the others never flayed with the nursery-maid's flannel, nor be blinded knew perhaps entrusted to a young nurse, whose with soap rubbed into our eyes, and which, spite of only recommendation was the serving for small company, or books, or summer-evening walks, she wages, the little creature gets a fall, which distorts performed till we had all outgrown Saturday-night the spine or dislocates the hip, or, perhaps, left for lavations; from the time when she called her young five minutes by the mother, while she performed some school-going brothers to her pillow each morning, needful household duty, sets fire to its pinafore, and and went through declension and conjugation, and carries to womanhood, and thence to the grave, a all the perplexities of multiplication table, clearing frightful token of suffering and agony, which almost away difficulties, and seeming to give to each bechecks the sympathy it ought to excite. Perhaps wildered brain the faculties of retention and comprethe parents, as is not unfrequently the case, indulged hension; from those days forward, when she helped certain crotchets of infantine education; like John to dress her younger and more aspiring sisters for Wesley's parents, perhaps, they taught the new-born the parties in which they, not she, were to figure; pilgrim of life to cry softly, and to dread the rod when she helped to make the bridal garments, as even before it knew its mother's face; perhaps it each successively married off; and then as she aswas put under a stated and unnatural regimen; per- sumed the new character of aunt, and spent many a haps, like a a little Indian, strapped to a board; guinea on the cap and frock and dainty little bonnet perhaps hardly swaddled at all; for it is incredible for each new-comer, for which there was still a what experiments of training are tried upon first warm nook in her warm capacious heart; from all children, especially by parents who reckon them- those days, and their duties, to the time when she selves philosophical. God help all first children! became mistress in her father's house, and was, as it They may be decked out in laboriously embroidered were, eyes to the blind, and feet to the lame, reading garments, for every young mother is prodigal of for hours, to the old man, not books of her choice but needlework for her first born; but what avails this of his, and walking out, with slow, gentle steps, to the little victim of fantastic systems or of ignorant literally supporting his, whenever the sunshine was mismanagement! Parents often themselves look warm enough to tempt him abroad: through all these back with astonishment, if not with remorse, upon years of duties, nobly performed, and of self-renuntheir first essays in infint training, and may trace ciation, could it be said that Letty, though a single many an infirmity of temper in their first born, many sister, was an useless member of society? No such a physical weakness or lasting deformity, to their thing, Letty has done more to make virtue lovely, to own absurd notions or mere want of experience. diffuse happiness, and to decrease suffering and sorrow, than many wise or rich men, or even than many wives and mothers.

Whether our parents had philosophised or experimentalised upon our elder sister, I know not; but certain it is, she was dissimilar to the rest of the fa

mily in many respects; much plainer in person, as I have said, and gifted with no showy faculties, but eminent in patience and disinterested affection. This part of the system, if system indeed there had been in Letty's early education, had proved decidedly successful.

It is among the most vulgar of errors to consider women useless because they are single. Only look round your acquaintance-who is the one universally useful, the one applied to in every time of difficulty and trial? The single sister of the family.

Again, let us take our own Letty as an example. Say nothing of her virtue as a neighbour to the poor Letty, however, was one of those destined by her quiet, unostentatious benevolence-her weekly common consent to live and die in a state of single pensioners among the old, and her proteges among blessedness. With a heart capable of the most entire the young-but let us see what place of comparative devotion, she was destined only to see one after an- usefulness she holds among those of her own family. other of her more attractively endowed sisters wooed John and his wife would take a trip up the Rhine; and wedded. First one, and then another, went off, the season is propitious; it is determined upon as and all the gossips of the little town averred that soon as thought of for Letty will come and take Mr. -'s daughters were marrying exceedingly charge of the children. Mary's two eldest children well; still Letty remained to rejoice in the joy of have had the whopping-cough, and change of air is others, rather than to anticipate joy for herself. How needed for them. "Oh, send them to aunt Letty," was it that no amiable man, requiring chiefly in his is the immediate resource; "she will take care of wife every virtue which could grace a woman, never them!" "Aunt Letty is coming down for the sought the hand of sister Letty? Many a plainer christening," say Tom's seven children to one of their woman had married, and many a less intellectual nursery-maids; and she will bring me a top," one; and every day dozens without one tithe of her exclaims one; "and me a ringing omnibus," says goodness of heart had been selected to become the another. "She will bring me a great doll," says angel of some sweet home. But Letty was still one little damsel, and will cut us apple-swans and passed over! The truth is soon told; Letty was little pippin-mice! We shall have such fun when destined to live and die a single sister. aunt Letty comes !" Again, George's wife is thought But let it not be said that such as she are useless to be consumptive, and a winter in Devonshire is members of society. From the days of my earliest recommended. George cannot accompany her for remembrance, when she read us the pleasant fairy the whole time, but Letty can. To be sure, Letty is