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some time, the singularity of whose notes surprised me. Having shot him from off the top of a very tall tree, I found it to be the Black-Headed Titmouse, with a long and deep indentation in the cranium, the skull having been evidently at some former time drove in and fractured, but was now perfectly healed. Whether or not the change of voice could be owing to this circumstance, I cannot pretend to decide." The unnatural practice of destroying their sick is however denied of these birds by late writers.

The Chicadee is five and a half inches in length, and six in extent. The whole upper part of the head and neck is black, and the body a mouse-color. It has often been confounded with the European Marsh Titmouse, but there seems good reason to consider this as an error. The foreign bird is never seen in flocks, frequents streams or water-courses, and has a note quite different from that of the Chicadee. It is also an inch shorter.

ARIEL IN THE CLOVEN PINE.

BY BAYARD TAYLOR.

Now the frosty stars are gone:

I have watched them, one by one,
Fainting on the shores of Dawn.
Round and full the glorious sun
Walks with level step the spray,
Through his vestibule of Day,
While the wolves that howled anon
Slink to dens and coverts foul,
Guarded by the demon owl,
Who, last night, with mocking croon
Wheeled athwart the chilly moon,
And with eyes that blankly glared
On my direful torment stared.

The lark is flickering in the light;
Still the nightingale doth sing-
All the isle, alive with Spring,
Lies, a jewel of delight

On the blue sea's heaving breast:
Not a breath from out the West,
But some balmy smell doth bring
From the sprouting myrtle buds,
Or from meadows wide, that lie
Each a green and dazzling sky,
Paved with yellow cowslip-stars,
Cloud-like, crossed by roseate bars
Of the bloomy almond woods,

And lit, like heaven, with fairest sheen
Of the sun that hangs between.

All is life that I can spy,

To the farthest sea and sky,
And my own the only pain
Within this ring of Tyrrhene main.

In the gnarled and cloven Pine
Where that hell-born hag did chain me,
All this orb of cloudless shine,
All this youth in Earth's old veins
Tingling with the Spring's sweet wine,
With a sharper torment pain me.
Pansies, in soft April rains

And April's sun, from Thea's lap
Fill their stalks with honeyed sap,
But the sluggish blood she brings
To the tough Pine's hundred rings,
Closer locks their cruel hold,
Closer draws the scaly bark
Round my prison, lightning-riven;
So when Winter, wild and dark,
Vexes wave and writhing wold

And with murk vapor swathes the heaven,

I must feel the vile bat creep
In my narrow cleft, to sleep.
By this coarse and alien state
Is my dainty essence wronged;
The fine sense that erst belonged
To my nature, chafes at Fate,
Till the happier elves I hate,
Who in moonlight dances turn
Underneath the palmy fern,

Or in light and twinkling bands
Follow on with linked hands
To the Ocean's yellow sands.

The primrose-bells each morning ope
In their cool, deep beds of grass;
Violets make the airs that pass
Tell-tales of their fragrant slope.

I can see them where they spring
Never brushed by fairy wing.
All those corners I can spy
In the island's solitude,
Where the dew is never dry,
Nor the miser bees intrude.
Cups of rarest hue are there,
Full of perfumed wine undrained-
Mushroom banquets, ne'er profaned,
Canopied by maiden-hair.
Pearls I see upon the sands,
Never touched by other hands,
And the rainbow bubbles shine
On the ridged and frothy brine,
Tenantless of voyager

Till they burst in vacant air.
O the songs that sung might be

And the mazy dances woven,
Had that witch ne'er crossed the sea
And the Pine been never cloven!

Many years my direst pain

Has made the wave-rocked isle complain.
Winds, that from the Cyclades
Came, to ruffle with foul riot
Round its shore's enchanted quiet,
Bore my wailings on the seas;
Sorrowing birds in Autumn went
Through the world with my lament.
Still the bitter fate is mine,
All delight unshared to see,
Smarting in the cloven Pine,
While I wait the tardy axe
Which, perchance, shall set me free
From the damned witch, Sycorax.

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REMINISCENCES;

OR AUNT ABBY'S PINCUSHION.

BY EMMA C. EMBURY.

READER, do you love old houses, old books, old pieces of furniture, old chairs, in short, all the relics of antiquity which fashionable people usually discard and despise? If so, there is a bond of sympathy between us, and I shall not be afraid to rake among the cold ashes of the past for some unconsumed remnant of other days, even though I find only trifles to reward my search. The very table on which I write, black with age, and wearing a polish which nothing but years and years of manual labor could have given it, owes its peculiar favor in my eyes to the fact of its being more than a century old. What stories could it not tell of days gone by; what reminiscences of tea-drinkings, and christenings, and weddings, and funerals must be imbedded in every pore of the old mahogany!

But for real hearty enjoyment of such a taste for homely antiquities, commend me to an old-fashioned secretary, (that is the true name-bureau is but a modern Gallicism,) with its desk, and pigeon-holes, and secret-drawers, especially if it have been an heirloom in possession of a maiden aunt, who died a spinster of seventy-two, or thereabouts. What stores of relics it contains-locks of hair taken from the heads of pretty children, whom we only recollect as wrinkled old bodies that seemed never to have been young; mourning-rings, with obituary inscriptions of persons whose existence we should never have known but for this record of their death; golden knee-buckles and sparkling paste shoe-buckles, reminding us of the days when the dress of a gentleman was hopelessly inimitable to the rowdies and loafers of the period; fragments of wedding-gowns, carefully rolled in bits of linen, yellow with agepreserved in order to impress the next generation with due respect for some wizened-up, childish old lady, who was once a belle, and was married in a dress of silver brocade.

Perhaps, too, there are more tender memorials hidden in the secret drawer. Let us touch the spring, and lo! what trophies of love's power are there. Shall we pause to read these verses? The ink is almost faded out, the paper is falling to pieces in its folds, and he who wrote, and she who with fluttering heart first read those tender lines, have long since been dust and ashes. Here is a quaint old ring-two hands clasped together, and within the circle an inscription in old English characters-the single word, "Forever." She who once wore that ring was an angel upon earth, and he who placed it there, lived and died "as the beasts that perish ;" will their union be, indeed, forever? Look at that bracelet, woven of

soft, silken hair, its golden clasps are dimmed with age, but the hair still wears its rich sunshiny lustre, though she who bestowed it as a parting gift to a sister, has been long a tenant of the tomb. What is this, folded so carefully and so closely, like one of the mummied mysteries of the pyramids ? A curl, a thick, dark curl-not the long flowing tress that might have floated over woman's graceful neck; these crisped and glossy tendrils tell of the strength and beauty of manhood. A faint perfume rises from the inner folds of the envelope-the ashes of a rose are there enclosed. And this is all! But what a tale do these scanty memorials of a by-gone love impart to the beholder! What matters it that the details of the story are forgotten? What matters it whether the lady or her lover were to blame? It was a love tender and true, but yet unhappy, else wherefore the curl of raven hair so carefully cherished, and the dead rose so reverently buried beside the more life-like memento? The love which brings happiness becomes diffusive in its expression, and the lovetokens of the youth and maiden are hidden, in afterdays, beneath the accumulation of affection's later offerings. But when one flower becomes the treasure of a life-time; when one lock of hair is guarded like the heart's pearl of price, then be sure that the hallowing touch of sorrow has been there. It is only when grief and love go hand in hand, that trifles become holy relics wherever they tread. Alas! do we not all wear upon our hearts a reliquary, in which, impearled with tears, and adorned with the fine gold of our best affections, we have enshrined some fragment of the past, whose value we alone can tell?

But I am growing sad, serious, and, of course, dull; yet the object which led me into this train of thought was certainly not calculated to inspire any especial exhibition of sentiment. I was rummaging in such a secretary as I have described, when I accidentally pulled out a round pincushion, banded with silver about the middle, and attached to a substantial silver chain, which terminated in a broad hook, for the purpose of fastening it to the girdle of some thrifty housewife. On the heavily-wrought circlet which made the equinoctial line of the purple velvet globes which had been doomed to do duty in so humble a capacity, were the initials "A. L.," and I at once recognized it as the constant appendage of my respected and venerated relative, Aunt Abby.

I had just been reading a paragraph respecting the female clubs in Paris, and the sight of this relic of old times, reminded me of the fact that poor Aunt Abbey had lived just half a century too soon, for to

the day of her death the old lady's favorite topic of conversation was the "equality of the sexes." How would she have rejoiced in the modern attempts to enfranchise woman from her thraldom! how would she have gloried in the idea of woman's equal rights of property! how would she have delighted in the prospect of political privileges for her sex! how she would have expatiated upon the benefits of a female House of Representatives! Aunt Abby (my great aunt, by the by) was emphatically an advocate for woman's "standing alone," (I believe that is the phrase among the reformers,) and certainly, though she had a father, uncles, cousins, to say nothing of a husband, she succeeded in "standing alone," to a certain extent, all her life.

But what, you will say, had a disciple of progress, a defender of woman's rights, a declaimer against woman's slavery, to do with a pincushion? Let me sketch her portrait at full length, and then you will see how curiously she blended the duties and prerogatives of both sexes in her own proper person.

Abigal, or, as she was usually called, Abby Leyburn, was the only child of a learned and eccentric clergyman, who, being disappointed in his hope of exercising his theories of education on a son, chose to educate his daughter after the manner of a boy. Fortunately for him, the little girl possessed a singularly strong and quick mind. She grasped at knowledge as most children would at playthings, and imbibed wisdom with as much zest as others would have sucked an orange. Latin, Greek and Hebrew, mathematics, moral philosophy, to say nothing of the lighter accomplishments of botany, geology, and natural history, were among the young lady's acquirements. Her father had determined to make her a second Madame Dacier, and he really seemed likely to find her a sort of female Crichton. Nor were these all her acquisitions. The details of housekeeping, the thrift, management, and tidiness necessary to the comfort of American homes, was as easy as the alphabet to Abby. She could knit, and spin, and sew; she could bake, and brew, and cook; she could milk, and churn, and make cheese; and nobody could so effectually and rapidly "set things to rights."

Beside all this, Abby Leyburn, at twenty years of age, was one of the handsomest girls in the country. She was like nothing so much as the effigy of Britannia on an English penny. Don't laugh, reader, the comparison is a highly complimentary one, but lest you should not recollect the stately Mrs. Bull, I will describe my heroine. Abby was just six feet high, but magnificently proportioned, a perfect Juno in form, with large black eyes, a high forehead, full red lips, and a chin as massive and as despotic in its expression as Napoleon's. Her profile was superbbold, strongly-marked, but beautifully classical. Her abundant hair, usually worn back from her brow, and gathered into a knot at the back of her head, was black as the crow's wing. Her teeth were white, strong, and somewhat pointed in shape, a peculiarity which rather impaired the softness of her smile, inasmuch as it was always associated with the beholder's

remembrance of a somewhat similar conformation in the dental perfections of the only wild animal who has ever been accused of laughing-I mean the hyena. Not that Abby bore the slightest resemblance to the disagreeable creature just named. But her smile certainly lacked that indefinable charm which usually belongs to such pleasant demonstrations of good humor.

As a specimen of the human animal Abby was perfect. The superb proportions of her well-rounded figure, her complexion, pure, fresh, and radiant with health, her firm step, quick, active motions, and great strength of frame, combined to make her a model of "le grande e beau physique." Add to these personal attractions, her learning, and her domestic accomplishments, and one might almost fancy that Aunt Abby, in her younger days at least, came near being

"That faultless monster which the world ne'er saw 33 What did she lack? you will ask. Certainly not virtues, for she abounded in them. No; her defects were of a very different character. She had every thing that one would consider desirable; but Aunt Abby lacked "one sweet weakness." There was the difficulty. She had no weaknesses. That magnificent person of hers was brimful of strong, stubborn intellect. If she had a heart, it was only a piece of mechanism, necessary to the workings of the human machine. The brain-the strong, massive, abundant brain, which lay behind that immense forehead, was the only motive power which she acknowledged. Had she no benevolence, no kindly impulses, no yearning tenderness of soul, no sentiment? Not an atom of either; yet she did the most benevolent things in the world, lavished kindness upon all who deserved it, was full of gentleness toward little children, and, if judged by her deeds, would have seemed overflowing with the milk of human kindness. But still it was the dictates of that cold despotic intellect which she obeyed. "People must be in want, and must be relieved by those who had means. Humanity was full of suffering-the healthy must look after the sick. Little children are incipient men and women, therefore must be taken care of. Sentiment was but the penumbra, the shadow of a shadow as unsubstantial as itself.” Such were among the apothegms of this singular woman. Reversing the established axiom, that “there is nothing in the intellect which does not come by the senses," she seemed to assert that "there was nothing in the senses which did not come by the intellect."

As Mr. Leyburn held the office of president over one of the few institutions of learning then in America, Abby had ample opportunity for displaying her talents and beauty to the admiring eyes of sundry young students. But Abby had no personal vanity; she knew she was handsome, just as she knew she was strong and robust, and she would have scorned the idea of being a belle. The young men, although belonging to that peculiarly inflammable species known by the name of "College Boys," would as

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