Chapter 4

This was too neat a _mot_ for the literary friend to forget. That afternoon, he called upon a lady on Beacon Hill, and noticing a copy of "In Memoriam" on her table, saw his opportunity.

After the usual greetings, he took up the book. "Have you read it?" he asked.

"Yes," said the lady, "and I have enjoyed it greatly."

"So have I," said her visitor, "and do you know that it seems to me that in this charming poem Tennyson has done for friendship what Petrarch did for love."

"Indeed," rejoined the lady, adding, with a mischievous smile, "Mr. ------" (naming a well-known essayist and critic) "called this morning, _and said the same thing_."

Who it was that originated the apt comparison remains an unsolved mystery to this day.

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A DOG AND A STRING.

The Paris _Figaro_ reports a conversation between an optician and a customer of an inquiring mind:

A near-sighted friend went to an optician the other day to change the glasses of his spectacles, which had become too weak. He was given the next number lower.

"After this number, what will I take?" he asked.

"These."

"And after that?"

"Those."

"And then?" asked the myope, with an anxious air.

"Then," said the dealer, "I think a small and sagacious dog, with a string attached, will be about the thing."

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GOOD MANNERS.

Sydney Smith, in the following paragraph, suggests the moral basis of good manners:

Manners are the shadows of virtues; the momentary display of those qualities which our fellow-creatures love and respect. If we strive to become, then, what we strive to appear, manners may often be rendered useful guides to the performance of our duties.

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A CARD.

_To every purchaser of our Holly Scroll Saw we_ give free _full-sized Designs, Blades, Drill Points, Manual, &c., which would cost, if bought separately at the stores, over_ $2. _The GENUINE Holly Scroll Saw, with this_ rare offer, _is to be had only of Perry Mason & Co., who were the first to place it in the market._ Get the best. _The GENUINE HOLLY is the best._

HOLLY SCROLL SAW.

We do not need to represent it as worth $23 or $30. We do say that it is the best saw in the world for the price. The hundreds who have purchased it at our office are surprised that it can be made so well and sold so cheap. It is easy to operate, almost noiseless, very strong, all iron and elegantly ornamented. It has a powerful Drill always in motion; a Tilting Table that can be adjusted in a moment by a thumb screw. It is the greatest mechanical invention in the art of Bracket Sawing ever produced. Any boy with a little mechanical skill can earn one or more dollars per day, and thus pay for his machine in a little time. We cannot praise the Holly Scroll Saw too much.

ON RECEIPT OF $3, which is the price of the Holly Scroll Saw with the Drill, we will give free the following valuable list of articles. With this Saw and these splendid Designs any boy or girl ought to make enough money to clothe themselves for a year, besides filling their homes with beautiful articles for ornament and use.

1 Design for a $5 Queen Anne Clock. 1 Design for a $2.50 Princess Wall-Pocket. 1 Design for a $3 Eastlake Book-Shelf. 1 Design for a $2 Eastlake Foot-Rest. 1 Design for a $1.15 Eastlake Bracket. 1 Design for a $2 Slipper Holder. Designs for $50 worth of Brackets. 200 Miniature Designs. 5 Silhouette Designs. 1 Sheet Impression Paper. 12 Best Steel Saw Blades. 2 Best Drill Points. 1 Illustrated Manual of Fret Sawing and Wood Carving.

_If you desire to know more about it before purchasing, please send us two three-cent stamps and the names of four persons who you think will be interested in Bracket Sawing, and we will send full description and 10 full size, new and elegant Bracket Designs._

DESCRIPTION.--It is 33 inches high, and has 18 inches swing. Speed from 800 to 1000 strokes per minute, and has a two-inch stroke. The Saw has as great power as any high cost machine. It is fully warranted by us.

The Holly Saw can be sent either by freight or express. It is packed in a case 3 feel long, 15 inches wide and 4 inches deep, and weighs about 30 pounds. All New York and Western orders will be filled from our storehouse in Rochester, N.Y. Price, $3. Address

Perry Mason & Co., 41 Temple Place, Boston, Mass.

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The Greatest Musical Success of the Day is

H.M.S. PINAFORE!

It has attracted large audiences, night after night, and week after week, in all the principal cities, and, having easy music, and needing but simple scenery, is being extensively rehearsed by amateurs everywhere. This success is merited by its perfectly innocent wit, its lively words and good music. Try it while it is new, in every village!

Elegant copies, with Music, Words and Libretto, mailed for $1 00. Per dozen, $9.00.

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_Emerson & Tilden's_ HIGH SCHOOL CHOIR . . . . $1 00 LAUREL WREATH, by _W. O. Perkins_ . . . . . . . 1 00 _C. Everest's_ SCHOOL SONG BOOK . . . . . . . . . 60 are three of the very best books for Seminaries, Normal and High Schools, &c.

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OCTAVO CHORUSES.

A splendid stock of these on hand, cost but 6 to 10 cts. each, and each contains a favorite Anthem, Glee, Oratorio, or ether Chorus, Quartet or Part-Song. They are much used by Choirs and Societies for occasional singing. Try a dozen. Send for list, or send 10 cts. for our full Book Catalogue.

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Invest 6 cts. for one Musical Record, or $2 for a year.

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OLIVER DITSON & CO., Boston.

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NANCY LEE, Whoa, Emma! A Warrior Bold, We'd Better Bide Awee, Janet's Choice, Letter in the Candle, Home, Sweet Home, Killarney, You and I, Good-bye Sweetheart, Helter Skelter Galop, Blue Danube Waltzes (3 nos.), Cecilia March, Black Key Mazurka, Merry Party Waltz, Speak to Me, When the Corn is Waving Annie Dear, Katy's Letter, Temperance Battle Cry. Popular music. Each 5 cts.; any 6 for 25c.; or 13 for 50c. Postage stamps taken. Wm. H. BONER & Co., Agts, No. 1102 Chestnut St., Phila.

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GREAT OFFER FOR THIS MONTH.

We will, during THIS MONTH, _dispose of_ 100 PIANOS & ORGANS, at EXTRAORDINARY LOW prices for cash. SPLENDID ORGANS 2 3-5 sets of reeds $70 3 sets with Sub Bass and Coupler $85, 2 sets $55, 1 do. $40. 7 Octave _all_ ROSEWOOD PIANOS $130, 7 1-3 do. $140, do. $150, warranted SIX years. AGENTS WANTED. Illustrated catalogues mailed. Music at half price. HORACE WATERS & SONS, Manf'rs and Dealers, 40 East 14th St., N. Y.

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FREE - I WILL SEND FREE a _magnificent_ Piano or Cabinet Organ, _with handsome Instruction Book,_ boxed and shipped on board cars, all freight paid. I am the largest establishment of this kind on this continent. _New Pianos,_ $125. _New Organs,_ $65 and upwards. _Beware of imitators._ DANIEL F. BEATTY, Washington, N. J.

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Much Sickness, Undoubtedly, with Children, attributed to other causes, is occasioned by Worms. BROWN'S VERMIFUGE COMFITS or Worm Lozenges, although effectual in destroying worms, can do no possible injury to the most delicate child. This valuable combination has been successfully used by physicians, and found to be absolutely sure in eradicating worms, so hurtful to children. Sold by all druggists. 25 cents a box.

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LADY AGENTS WANTED FOR MADAME GRISWOLD'S

Any of above goods sent by mail, postage paid, on receipt of list price. Send for Descriptive Circular. Permanent and profitable employment for ladies. Exclusive territory given. CAUTION.--_All Corsets manufactured by me have the stamp and Trade Mark inside. Reliable information any infringements sent to my address will be suitably rewarded._ For Descriptive Circular address main office. MADAME GRISWOLD, 921 and 923 Broadway, N. Y. Branch office, 32 Winter St., Arcade Building, Boston, Mass, Mention this paper.

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For Beauty of Polish, Saving Labor, Cleanliness, Durability & Cheapness, unequaled. MORSE BROS., Prop'rs, Canton. Mass.

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10 VARIETIES Foreign Copper Coins, and 125 Foreign Stamps, with Circulars, for 25c and stamp. ACME STAMP CO., Montpelier, Vt.

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For the Companion

THE BOY I LOVE.

My boy, do you know the boy I love? I fancy I see him now; His forehead bare in the sweet spring air, With the wind of hope in his waving hair, The sunrise on his brow.

He is something near your height, may be; And just about your years; Timid as you; but his will is strong, And his love of right and his hate of wrong Are mightier than his fears.

He has the courage of simple truth. The trial that he must bear, The peril, the ghost that frights him most, He faces boldly, and like a ghost It vanishes in air.

As wildfowl take, by river and lake, The sunshine and the rain. With cheerful, constant hardihood He meets the bad luck and the good, The pleasure and the pain.

Come friends in need? With heart and deed He gives himself to them. He has the grace which reverence lends,-- Reverence, the crowning flower that bends The upright lily-stem.

Though deep end strong his sense of wrong, Fiery his blood and young, His spirit is gentle, his heart is great, He is swift to pardon and slow to hate; And master of his tongue.

Fond of his sports? No merrier lad's Sweet laughter ever rang! But he is so generous and so frank, His wildest wit or his maddest prank Can never cause a pang.

His own sweet ease, all things that please, He loves, like any boy; But fosters a prudent fortitude; Nor will he squander a future good To buy a fleeting joy.

Face brown or fair? I little care, Whatever the hue may be, Or whether his eyes are dark or light; If his tongue be true and his honor bright, He is still the boy for me.

Where does he dwell? I cannot tell; Nor do I know his name. Or poor, or rich? I don't mind which; Or learning Latin, or digging ditch; I love him all the same.

With high, brave heart perform your part, Be noble and kind as he, Then, some fair morning, when you pass, Fresh from glad dreams, before your glass, His likeness you may see.

You are puzzled? What! you think there is not A boy like him,--surmise That he is only a bright ideal? But you have power to make him real, And clothe him to our eyes.

You have rightly guessed: in each pure breast Is his abiding-place. Then let your own true life portray His beauty, and blossom day by day With something of his grace. J. T. Trowbridge.

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For the Companion.

A TRUE STORY.

A few years ago a couple of good women living together near one of our great cities took two or three orphan children into their home.

As time passed, other helpless, friendless little ones came to them, until they had thirty under their care. Their own means they gave to the last dollar, and for the rest they trusted God, living from week to week on the contributions of the charitable, but making it a rule to ask help of nobody but Him who has promised to be a father to the fatherless.

Last winter one of their friends published a short account of this little home, and happening to meet that day a gentleman well known as a financier all over the country, handed it to him.

"This Home is but a mile or two from your house, Mr. C------," he said.

"Yes," said Mr. C------, carelessly; "I have heard of it. Kept up by prayer and faith, eh?"

"Yes. A bad capital for business, I fancy."

Mr. C------ thrust the paper in his pocket, and thought no more about it. That night at about eleven o'clock he was sitting toasting his feet before going to bed, when there was a tap at his door, and his daughter came in with the paper in her hand and her cheeks burning with excitement.

"Father, I've been reading about this Orphan Home. We never have done anything for it"---

"And you wish to help the orphans, do you? Very well, we will look into the matter to-morrow."

She hesitated. "Father, I want to do it to-night."

It was a bitter night in December; the snow lay upon the ground. "The horses and coachman are asleep long ago. Nonsense, my dear; wait until morning."

"Something tells me we ought to go now," she pleaded, with tears in her eyes.

Mr. C------ yielded; he even caught the infection of her excitement, and while she called the servants and heaped the carriage with bundles of bedding, clothes and baskets of provisions, he inclosed a hundred-dollar bill in a blank envelope.

In the meantime the guardians of the orphans had on that day spent their last dollar. "We had," said the matron, "actually nothing to give the children for breakfast."

The two women went to their knees that night, God only knows with what meaning in their cries for daily bread.

While they were yet praying, a carriage drove to the door, and without a word, the clothes, provisions and money were handed out by an unknown lady inside.

They knew God had sent her in answer to their prayers.

If we all could bring our absolute, simple faith in Him into our daily lives, what a solid foundation we would lay under all change of fortune, disease, or of circumstance! We should have then a house indeed founded on a rock.

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"TEARS AND KISSES."

A writer in the _Sabbath School Times_ tells a pathetic story of that language of signs which is common all over the world: "Two little Italians accompanied a man with a harp out of the city along the country roads, skirted by fields and woods, and here and there was a farmhouse by the way.

"He played and they sang at every door. Their voices were sweet, and the words in an unknown tongue.

"The old ladies came out of the door, and held their hands above their eyes to see what it all meant, and from behind them peered the flaxen heads of timid children.

"Not knowing how to make themselves understood, the little children, when they had finished singing, shyly held out their little brown hands or their aprons to get anything that might be given them and take it to the dark man out at the gate, who stood ready to receive it.

"One day the dark harpist went to sleep, and the little boy and girl, becoming tired of waiting for him, went off to a cottage under the hill an began to sing under the window.

"They sang as sweetly as the voices of birds. Presently the blinds were opened wide, and they saw by the window a fair lady on a sick bed regarding them.

"Her eyes shone with a feverish light, and the color of her cheeks was like a beautiful peach.

"She smiled, and asked them if their feet were tired. They said a few words softly in their own tongue.

"She said, 'Are the green fields not better than your city?'

"They shook their heads.

"She asked them, 'Have you a mother?'

"They looked perplexed.

"She said, 'What do you think while you walk along the country roads?'

"They thought she asked for another song, so eager was the face, and they sang at once a song full of sweetness and pity, so sweet the tears came into her eyes.

"_That_ was a language they had learned; so they sang one sweeter still.

"At this she kissed her hand and waved it to them. Their beautiful faces kindled, and like a flash the timid hands waved back a kiss.

"She pointed upward to the sky, and sent a kiss up thither.

"At this they sank upon their knees and also pointed thither, as much as asking, 'Do you also know the good God?'

"A lady leaning by the window, said, 'So tears and kisses belt the earth, and make the whole world kin.' And the sick one added, 'And God is over all.'"

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RIGHTS IN THE ROAD.

The following statements as to rights in the road may be useful to some of our readers. It certainly contradicts certain common opinions:

If a farm deed is bounded by, on or upon a road, it usually extends to the middle of the roadway.

The farmer owns the soil of half the road, and may use the grass, trees, stones, gravel, sand or anything of value to him, either on the land or beneath the surface, subject only to the superior rights of the public to travel over the road, and that of the highway surveyor to use such materials for the repair of the road; and these materials may be carted away and used elsewhere on the road.

No other man has a right to feed his cattle there, or cut the grass or trees, much less deposit his wood, old carts, wagons or other things there.

The owner of a drove of cattle that stops to feed in front of your land, or a drove of pigs which root up the soil, is responsible to you at law, as much as if they did the same thing inside the fence.

Nobody's children have a right to pick up the apples under your trees, although the same stand wholly outside of your fence.

No private person has a right to cut or lop off the limbs of your trees in order to move his old barn or other buildings along the highway, and no traveller can hitch his horse to your trees in the sidewalk without being liable, if he gnaws the bark or otherwise injures them.

If your wall stands partly on your land and partly outside the fence, no neighbor can use it except by your permission.

Nay, more; no man has a right to stand in front of your land and insult you with abusive language without being liable to you for trespassing on your land.

He has a right to pass and repass in an orderly and becoming manner; a right to use the road, but not to abuse it.

But notwithstanding the farmer owns the soil of the road, even he cannot use it for any purpose which interferes with the use of it by the public for travel.

He cannot put his pig-pen, wagons, cart, wood or other things there, if the highway surveyor orders them away as obstructing public travel.

If he leaves such things outside his fence, and within the limits of the highway, as actually laid out, though some distance from the traveled path, and a traveller runs into them in the night and is injured, the owner is not only liable to him for private damages, but may also be indicted and fined for obstructing a public highway.

And if he has a fence or wall along the highway, he must place it all on his land, and not half on the road, as in case of division fences between neighbors.

But as he owns the soil, if the road is discontinued, or located elsewhere, the land reverts to him, and he may inclose it to the centre, and use it as part of his farm.--_Judge Bennett._

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For the Companion.

DANA.

O deep grave eyes! that long have seemed to gaze On our low level from far loftier days, O grand gray head! an aureole seemed to grind, Drawn from the spirit's pure, immaculate rays!

At length death's signal sounds! From weary eyes Pass the pale phantoms of our earth and skies; The gray head droops; the museful lips are closed On life's vain questionings and more vain replies!

Like some gaunt oak wert thou, that lonely stands 'Mid fallen trunks in outworn, desert lands; Still sound at core, with rhythmic leaves that stir To soft swift touches of aerial hands.

Ah! long we viewed thee thus, forlornly free, In that dead grove the sole unravished tree; Lo! the dark axeman smites! the oak lies low That towered in lonely calm o'er land and sea! PAUL H. HAYNE.

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LORD LORNE AND THE RAT.

While at school at Eton, Lord Lorne, the present Governor of Canada, had one scrape which exhibited him in a light that boys will appreciate. He was standing on the steps of Upper School one morning, waiting for eleven o'clock school, when one Campbell, a namesake of his, but no relative, asked him to hold a pet rat for a moment, while he--the owner of the beast--ran back to his dame's to fetch a book which he had forgotten.

On receiving the assurance that the rat was perfectly tame, and would not even bite a kitten, Lorne put him into the pocket of his jacket, and told the owner to make haste, but just at that moment the masters came out of "Chambers" and ascended the staircase, so Lorne was obliged to go into school with the brute.

All went well for five minutes, but soon the rat, indifferent to the honor of inhabiting a marquis' pocket, crept out and jumped on to the floor.

Some boys saw it and set up a titter, which excited the attention of the form-master, Mr. Y------, nicknamed "Stiggins," a strict disciplinarian.

"Who brought that rat into school?" he asked.

Lorne confessed that he was the culprit.

"Well, make haste to catch him and carry him out, or I shall complain of you," said Mr. Y------.

My lord laid down his Homer, but to catch the rat was not easy. Seeing himself an object of general attention, the animal darted under the scarlet curtain which separated one division from another, and, rushing amid a new lot of boys, provoked an uproar.

In a minute all the boys in the upper school-room, some two hundred and odd, were on their feet shouting, laughing, hooting, and preparing to throw their books at the rat, who, however, spared them this trouble by ducking down a hole, where he disappeared for good and a'.

Lorne had to come back, red and breathless, declaring that his game had eluded pursuit, whereupon Mr. Y------, who disliked riots, proceeded to make out a "bill" which consigned his lordship after school to the care of the Sixth Form Praeposter.

Luckily Dr. Goodford took a merciful view of the affair, and, as Lorne had not yet had "first fault," absolved him from kneeling on the block.

It is to be noted that Lorne might easily have exonerated himself by explaining under what circumstances he had taken charge of the rat; but he was not the kind of boy to back out of a scrape by betraying a friend, and if Dr. Goodford had refused him the benefit of a first fault, he would certainly have taken his flogging without a murmur.

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HEROIC MAIL-CARRIER.

The singular fact that a man who has lost his way always travels in a circle is vividly illustrated by the following narrative, told by a Montana paper, of a heroic mail-carrier:

Casey carried the mail, carried by a two-wheeled sulky. He started in a blinding snow storm, and the track across the prairie was lost.

As he did not reach the end of his drive at the appointed time, it was assumed that he had lost his way. Mr. William Rowe, informed of the circumstance, set forth, and in due time found a dim track where Casey had left the main road. Following this, Casey was found, sitting in his cart, which the horse was drawing slowly and painfully along.

He was in a doze, and Mr. Rowe shouted to him once or twice before he was roused to consciousness. It was then found that his right foot and leg were frozen nearly to the knee, and that his left foot was in the same condition.

It is believed that his injuries are not serious, and that he will not suffer the loss of either limb.

His story was soon told. The driver had been wandering over that trackless prairie for ten days and nights, without food or shelter, and with a temperature never above zero.

All this time he had moved in an almost perfect circle, and had picketed his horse and camped every night in almost the same spot.