began to recall the celebrated dwellers in Fleet street that figure in the biographies of English writers, and the actors and authors that are identified with English history itself. All around here you may find the names of streets, remains of celebrated resorts that you have read and reread of in the writings of the oldest and the wisest of England's authors. The quaint antiquities of old London are on every side. Through the Bar I went on my first stroll, but got no farther than a street on the left, where the well known name “Chancery Lane" arrested me as if by command.

Halting on the corner, while omnibuses and drays roared past, and standing oblivious to drivers of Hansom cabs, who drove close to the curb in expectation of a customer, I began to think of poor Miss Flite, in Dickens's story of "Bleak House," especially as a little bent old woman, bag on arm, shambled along directly up the street as if to show the way. Ah! now I remember. It was "on the eastern borders of Chancery Lane, that is to say, in Cook's court, Cursitor street, Mr. Snagsby, law stationer, pursues his lawful calling," according to the "Bleak House," and I wondered if there was a Cursitor street, or a Cook's court, where Mr. Snagsby kept his stationer's store, and Krook his rag-and-bottle warehouse, that looked as if it were a place where "everything was bought and nothing ever sold."

A penny to a street boy quickly solved the mystery, so far as the streets were concerned; for I was piloted up through Chancery Lane - occupied chiefly by lawyers' chambers, and with dozens of law stationer's shops where blank forms, pencils, pens, sealing wax, law lists, inkstands, and bunches of quills, with the oldfashioned binding of cord about them, and cutlery, and all that

sort of thing, were sold, into Cursitor street of somewhat similar character; and out of that ran Took's (not Cook's) court.

I got out into Chancery Lane again, and met English-looking lawyers with gray side whiskers, respectable black suits, gaiters and fob chains with big seals; one was getting into a trim looking brougham and giving the driver who was dressed in livery some directions; and the other was glancing at his watch, and telling a Hansom cab driver he had just called that he had just time to catch a train. Then there were the unmistakable lawyers' clerks, and lawyers' boys, besides the stream that had other business, and took the cut through Chancery Lane to get from Holborn to the Strand.

Here in Chancery Lane is the entrance to the law building known as Lincoln's Inn, a fine old gateway adorned with coatsof-arms in antique carving. We might look in at the garden and over Lincoln's Inn Fields, and while wandering round among this dreamy old pile, wonder where Sir Thomas Moore used to live, or Coke, the great lawyer, and Pitt, Canning, and Bishop Heber. They point to the wall next to Chancery Lane, and tell you that Ben Jonson worked there as a bricklayer, and actually laid part of it before his wit and brightness were discovered.

All around here, within a few rods of the corner of Chancery Lane and Fleet street, every street and alley is celebrated. Sam Johnson, Ben Jonson, Goldsmith, Cowley, Michael Drayton, Shenstone the poet, and a host of others, have made it classic ground. Here is Fetter Lane, the next street to Chancery Lane, that runs to Holborn, and where Dryden used to live; and here is the house which is pointed out to you; and Dr. Johnson is also said to have lived in this lane. Indeed, all the streets in this vicinity seem to have some reminiscence of the great lexicographer,

so much so that, one dreamy summer's day, when I was prying around in some of the quiet, clean, enclosed courts, surrounded by quaintly furbished-up old buildings, whose rooms were lawyers' offices, it seemed as though the huge bulk of the old fellow might very naturally shamble across the pave in his cocked hat and knee breeches, as he had done when living.

-CURTIS GUILD.

LINCOLN'S LETTER TO SECRETARY STANTON

MY DEAR SIR:

A poor widow, by the name of Baird, has a son in the army that for some offence had been sentenced to serve a long time without pay, or at most with very little pay. I do not like punishment of withholding pay; it falls so very hard upon poor families. After he had been serving in this way for several months, at the tearful appeal of the poor mother, I made a direction that he be allowed to enlist for a new term, on the same conditions as others. She now comes and says she cannot get it acted upon. Please do it.

I am, ever yours,

ABRAHAM LINCOLN.

A CHIMNEY FIRE

I built a chimney for a comrade old,
I did the service not for hope or hire,
And then I traveled on in winter's cold;

Yet all the day I glowed before the fire.

No sky - no earthly view —

No distance looking hue

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member-

No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,

No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds,
November!

For the sweet sleep which comes with night,
For the returning morning's light,
For the bright sun that shines on high,
For the stars glittering in the sky
For these, and everything we see,
O Lord! our hearts we lift to Thee
For everything give thanks!

A PURE HEART

My good blade carves the casques of men,

My tough lance thrusteth sure,

My strength is as the strength of ten,

Because my heart is pure.

THE UNION

When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in the heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union, on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent, on a land rent with civil feuds or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the land, still high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly, "Liberty first and Union afterwards," but everywhere spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart, - "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" -WEBSTER.

is

The books which help us most are those which make us think the most.

What I have kept I have lost; what I gave away I have.

I PASS THIS WAY

I expect to pass through this life but once. If, therefore, there any kindness I can show, or any good I can do to any fellowbeing, let me do it now, let me not defer it, for I shall not pass this way again.

-HEGEMAN.