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was nobody else to hear; and very pleasant, both to our little lady and her master, were these long winter evenings, when they diligently waded through Racine, and even got as far as the golden periods of Chateaubriand. The pets fared badly for petting in these days; they were fed and waited on, but not with the old devotion; it began to dawn on Miss Lucinda's mind that something to talk to was preferable, as a companion, even to Fun, and that there might be a stranger sweetness in receiving care and protection than in giving it.

Spring came at last. Its softer skies were as blue over Dalton as in the wide fields without, and its footsteps as bloombringing in Miss Lucinda's garden as in mead or forest. Now Monsieur Leclerc came to her aid again at odd minutes, and set her flower-beds with mignonette borders, and her vegetable-garden with salad herbs of new and flourishing kinds. Yet not even the sweet season seemed to hurry the catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy tender eyes have long seen impending. No, for this quaint alliance a quainter Cupid waited, - the chubby little fellow with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on youth and loveliness, was not wanted here. Lucinda's God of Love wore a lank, hard-featured, grizzly shape, no less than that of Israel Slater, who marched into the garden one fine June morning, earlier than usual, to find Monsieur in his blouse, hard at work weeding the cauliflower-bed.

"Good mornin', Sir! good mornin'!” said Israel, in answer to the Frenchman's greeting. "This is a real slick little garden-spot as ever I see, and a pootty house, and a real clever woman too. I'll be skwitched, ef it a'n't a fust-rate consarn, the hull on 't. Be you ever agoin' back to France, Mister?"

"No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay here; I have friend here: but there, oh, non! je ne reviendrai pas! ah, jamais! jamais!"

"Pa's dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don't understand your lingo; but ef you 're a-goin' to stay here, I don't see

why you don't hitch hosses with Miss Lucindy."

Monsieur Leclerc looked up aston

ished.

"Horses, my friend? I have no horse!"

"Thunder 'n' dry trees! I didn't say you hed, did I? But that comes o' usin' what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I s'pose. I wish 't he 'd use one kind o' figgurin’ a leetle more; he 'd pay me for that wood-sawin'. I didn't mean nothin' about hosses. I sot out fur to say, Why don't ye marry Miss Lucindy?"

"I?" gasped Monsieur,-" I, the foreign, the poor? I could not to presume so!"

"Well, I don't see 's it 's sech drefful presumption. Ef you 're poor, she 's a woman, and real lonesome too; she ha'n't got nuther chick nor child belongin' to her, and you 're the only man she ever took any kind of a notion to. I guess 't would be jest as much for her good as yourn."

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Monsieur Leclerc's soul was perturbed within him by these suggestions; he pulled up two young cauliflowers and reset their places with pigweeds; he hoed the nicely sloped border of the bed flat to the path, and then flung the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily occupation with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant one. The idea of a transition from his squalid and pinching boarding-house to the delicate comfort of Miss Lucinda's ménage, the prospect of so kind and good a wife to care for his hitherto dreaded future,- all this was pleasant. I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend; I must even confess that whatever element of that

nature existed between the two was now all on Miss Lucinda's side, little as she knew it. Certain it is, that, when she appeared that day at the dancing-class in a new green calico flowered with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough for a bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were married, she would take no more lessons! However, let us not blame him; he was a man, and a poor one; one must not expect too much from men, or from poverty; if they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it is so hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc justice, he had a very thorough respect and admiration for Miss Lucinda. Years ago, in his stormy youth-time, there had been a pair of soft-fringed eyes that looked into his as none would ever look again, — and they murdered her, those mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she knelt at her pure prayers, murdered her because she knelt beside an aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci, who had taken the pretty peasant from her own estate to bring her up for her maid. Jean Leclerc had lifted that pale shape from the pavement and buried it himself; what else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face in his hands, said softly, "The violet is dead, there is no spring for her. I will have now an amaranth, is good for the tomb."

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and linger. Miss Lucinda had the volume of Florian in her hands, and was wondering why he did not begin, when the book was drawn away, and a hand, laid on both of hers.

"Lucinda!" he began, "I give you no lesson to-night. I have to ask. Dear Mees, will you to marry your poor slave?"

"Oh, dear!" said Miss Lucinda.

Don't laugh at her, Miss Tender-eyes! You will feel just so yourself some day, when Alexander Augustus says, "Will you be mine, loveliest of your sex?" only you won't feel it half so strongly, for you are young, and love is Nature to youth, but it is a heavenly surprise to

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There, Mademoiselle! there's humility for you! you will never say that to Alexander Augustus!

Monsieur Leclerc soothed this frightened, happy, incredulous little woman into quiet before very long; and if he really began to feel a true affection for her from the moment he perceived her humble and entire devotion to him, who shall blame him? Not I. If we were all heroes, who would be valet-de-chambre? if we were all women, who would be men? He was very good as far as he went; and if you expect the chivalries of grace out of Nature, you "may expect," as old Fuller saith. So it was peacefully settled that they should be married, with a due amount of tears and smiles on Lucinda's part, and a great deal of tender sincerity on Monsieur's. She missed her dancing-lesson next day, and when Monsieur Leclerc came in the evening he found a shade on her happy face.

"Oh, dear!" said she, as he entered. "Oh, dear!" was Lucinda's favorite aspiration. Had she thought of it as an Anglicizing of "O Dieu!" perhaps she would have dropped it; but this time she went on headlong, with a valorous despair,

"I have thought of something! I'm afraid I can't! Monsieur, aren't you a Romanist?"

"What is that?" said he, surprised. "A Papist, - a Catholic!" "Ah!" he returned, sighing, 66 once I was bon Catholique,- once in my gone youth; after then I was nothing but the poor man who bats for his life; now I am of the religion that shelters the stranger and binds up the broken poor."

Monsieur was a diplomatist. This melted Miss Lucinda's orthodoxy right down; she only said,

"Then you will go to church with me?"

"And to the skies above, I pray,” said Monsieur, kissing her knotty hand like a lover.

So in the earliest autumn they were married, Monsieur having previously presented Miss Lucinda with a delicate plaided gray silk for her wedding attire, in which she looked almost young; and old Israel was present at the ceremony, which was briefly performed by Parson Hyde in Miss Manners's parlor. They

did not go to Niagara, nor to Newport; but that afternoon Monsieur Leclerc brought a hired rockaway to the door, and took his bride a drive into the country. They stopped beside a pair of bars, where Monsieur hitched his horse, and, taking Lucinda by the hand, led her into Farmer Steele's orchard, to the foot of his biggest apple-tree. There she beheld a little mound, at the head and foot of which stood a daily rose-bush shedding its latest wreaths of bloom, and upon the mound itself was laid a board on which she read, "Here lie the bones of poor Piggy."

Mrs. Lucinda burst into tears, and Monsieur, picking a bud from the bush, placed it in her hand, and led her tenderly back to the rockaway.

That evening Mrs. Lucinda was telling the affair to old Israel with so much feeling that she did not perceive at all the odd commotion in his face, till, as she repeated the epitaph to him, he burst out with,- "He didn't say what become o' the flesh, did he?"— and there with fled through the kitchen-door. For years

afterward Israel would entertain a few favored auditors with his opinion of the matter, screaming till the tears rolled down his cheeks,

"That was the beateree of all the weddin'-towers I ever heerd tell on. Goodness! it's enough to make the Wanderin' Jew die o' larfin'!"

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FIBRILIA.

THERE are not a few timid souls who imagine that England is falling into decay. Our Cousin John is apt to complain. He has been accustomed to enlarge upon his debts, his church-rates and poor-rates, his taxes on air, light, motion, "everything, from the ribbons of the bride to the brass nails of the coffin," upon the wages of his servants both on the land and the water, upon his Irish famine and exodus, and his vast expenses at home and abroad. And when we consider how small is his homestead, a few islands in a high latitude inferior to those of Japan in size and climate, and how many of his family have left him to better their condition, one might easily conclude that he had passed his meridian, and that his prospects were as cloudy as his atmosphere.

But our Cousin John, with a strong constitution, is in a green old age, and still knows how to manage his property.

Within the last two years he has quietly extinguished sixty millions of his debts in terminable annuities. He has improved his outlying lands of Scotland and Ireland, ransacked the battle-fields of Europe for bone-dust and the isles of the Pacific for guano, and imported enough to fertilize four millions of acres, and, not content with the produce of his homefarm, imports the present year more than four millions of tons of grain and corn to feed nineteen millions of his people.

He has carried his annual exports up to six hundred and thirty millions of dollars, and importing more than he exports still leaves the world his debtor. He has a strong fancy for new possessions, and selects the most productive spots for his plantations. When he desired muslin, calico, and camel's-hair shawls for his family, he put his finger on India; and when he called for those great staples of commerce, indigo, saltpetre, jute, flax, and linseed, India sent them at his bidding. When he required coffee, he found Cey

lon a Spice Island, and at his demand it furnished him with an annual supply of sixty millions of pounds. He required more sugar for his coffee, and by shipping a few coolies from Calcutta and Bombay to the Mauritius, once the Isle of France, it yields him annually two hundred and forty million pounds of sugar, more than St. Domingo ever yielded in the palmy days of slavery. He wanted wool, and his flocks soon overspread the plains of Australia, tendering him the finest fleeces, and his shepherds improved their leisure not in playing like Tityrus on the reed, but in opening for him mines of copper and gold. He had his eye on California, but Fremont was too quick for him, and he now contents himself with pocketing a large proportion of her gold, to say nothing of the silver of Mexico and Peru.

Wherever there is a canal to be excavated, a railway to be built, or a line of steamers to be established, our Cousin John is ready with a full purse to favor the enterprise. He turns even his sailors and soldiers to good account: the other day he subdued one hundred and fifty millions of rebels in the Indies, and then we find him dictating a treaty of peace and a tribute to the Emperor of China from the ruins of his summer-palace and the walls of Pekin. Although generally well disposed, especially towards his kith and kin this side the water, he is choleric, and if his best customers treat him ill, he does not hesitate to knock them down. Although dependent on Russia for his hemp and naval stores, and on China for his raw silk and teas, he suffers no such considerations to deter him from fighting, and usually gets some advantage when he comes to terms. He is belting the world with colonies, and forming agencies for his children wherever he can send the messengers of his commerce. At this very moment he is considering whether he shall transport coolies from China to Australia, Natal, or the Feegee

Islands, to raise his cotton and help put down Secession and export-duties, or whether he shall give a new stimulus to India cotton by railways and irrigation. He seems to prosper in all his business; for the 66 Edinburgh Review" reports him worth six thousand millions of pounds, at least, ―a very comfortable provision for his family.

The wealth and power of Great Britain are supposed to rest upon her mines of iron and coal. These undoubtedly help to sustain the fabric. With her iron and coal, she fashions and propels the winged Mercuries of her commerce; with these and the clay that underlies her soil, she erects her factories and workshops; these form the Briarean arms by which she fabricates her tissues. But it is by more minute columns than these, it is by the hollow tubes revealed by the microscope, the fibres of silk, wool, and flax, hemp, jute, and cotton, that she sustains the great structure of her wealth. These she spins, weaves, and prints into draperies which exact a tribute from the world. During the year 1860 Great Britain imported or produced a million tons of such fibres, an amount equal to five million bales of cotton, more than one-half of which were in cotton alone. These fibres it is our purpose to examine.

The thread of the silk-worm came early into use. The Chinese ascribe its introduction to the wife of one of their emperors, to whom divine honors were subsequently paid. Until the Christian era silk was little known in Europe or Western Asia. It is mentioned but three times in the common version of the Old Testament, and in each case the accuracy of the translation is questioned by German critics. It is, however, distinctly alluded to by St. John, by Aristotle, and by the poets who flourished at the court of Augustus, Virgil, Horace, and Tibullus, and is referred to by the writers of the first four centuries. Tertullian, in his homily on Female Attire, tells the ladies,-"Clothe yourselves with the silk of truth, with the fine linen of sanctity, and the purple of

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soul is in tatters." "Silken shawls are beautiful, but they are the production of worms."

The silken thread was early introduced. Galen recommends it for tying blood-vessels in surgical operations, and remarks that the rich ladies in the cities of the Roman Empire generally possessed such thread; he alludes also to shawls interwoven with gold, the material of which is brought from a distance, and is called Sericum, or silk. Down to the time of the Emperor Aurelian silk was of great value, and used only by the rich. His biographer informs us that Aurelian neither had himself in his wardrobe a garment composed wholly of silk, nor presented any to others, and when his own wife begged him to allow her a single shawl of purple silk, he replied,— “Far be it from me to permit thread to be balanced with its weight in gold!"— for a pound of gold was then the price of a pound of silk.

Silk is mentioned in some very ancient Arabic inscriptions; but down to the reign of the Emperor Justinian was imported into Europe from the country of the Seres, a people of Eastern Asia, supposed to be the Chinese, from whom it derived its name. During the reign of Justinian two monks brought the eggs of the silkworm to Byzantium from Serinda in India, and the manufacture of silk became a royal monopoly of the Roman Empire.

From Greece the culture of silk was gradually carried into Italy and Spain, and English abbots and bishops often returned from Rome with vestments of silk and gold. Silken threads are attached to the covers of ancient English manuscripts. Silk in the form of velvet may be seen on some of the ancient armor in the Tower of London; and portions of silk garments were found in 1827 in the Cathedral of Durham, on opening the tomb of St. Cuthbert. The use of silk, however, was so rare in England

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