ground of my own consciousness, and abolished into black nonentity by the first question which recalled me to actual life, as suddenly, as if one of those iron shop-blinds (which I always pass at dusk with a shiver, expecting to stumble over some poor but honest shop-boy's head, just taken off by its sudden and unexpected descent, and left outside upon the sidewalk) had come down in front of it "by the run."]

Should you like to hear what moderate wishes life brings one to at last? I used to be very ambitious, wasteful, extravagant, and luxurious in all my fancies. Read too much in the "Arabian Nights." Must have the lamp,-couldn't do without the ring. Exercise every morning on the brazen horse. Plump down into castles as full of little milk-white princesses as a nest is of young sparrows. All love me dearly at once.-Charming idea of life, but too high-colored for the reality. I have outgrown all this; my tastes have become exceedingly primitive, almost, perhaps, ascetic. We carry happiness into our condition, but must not hope to find it there. I think you will be willing to hear some lines which embody the subdued and limited desires of my maturity.

CONTENTMENT.

"Man wants but little here below."

LITTLE I ask; my wants are few;
I only wish a hut of stone,

I care not much for gold or land;—
Give me a mortgage here and there,-
Some good bank-stock,—some note of hard,
Or trifling railroad share;—

I only ask that Fortune send

A little more than I shall spend.

Honors are silly toys, I know,

And titles are but empty names;—
I would, perhaps, be Plenipo,—

But only near St. James;-
I'm very sure I should not care
To fill our Gubernator's chair.

Jewels are baubles; 'tis a sin

'lo care for such unfruitful things;— One good-sized diamond in a pin,—

Some, not so large, in rings,—

A ruby, and a pearl, or so,

Will do for me;-I laugh at show.

My dame should dress in cheap attire;
(Good, heavy silks are never dear ;)—

I own perhaps I might desire

Some shawls of true cashmere,— Some marrowy crapes of China silk, Like wrinkled skins on scalded milk.

I would not have the horse I drive
So fast that folks must stop and stare
An easy gait-two, forty-five-

Suits me; I do not care ;—

Perhaps, for just a single spurt,
Some seconds less would do no hurt.

Of pictures, I should like to own

Titians and Raphaels three or fourI love so much their style and tone,— One Turner, and no more.—

(A landscape, foreground golden dirt
The sunshine painted with a squirt.)

Of books but few,-some fifty score
For daily use, and bound for wear;
The rest upon an upper floor;—
Some little luxury there

Of red morocco's gilded gleam,

And vellum rich as country cream.

Busts, cameos, gems,—such things as these.

Which others often show for pride,

I value for their power to please,

And selfish churls deride ;

One Stradivarius, I confess,

Two Meerschaums, I would fain possess.

Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,
Nor ape the glittering upstart fool;-

Shal' not carved tables serve my turn,

But all must be of buhl?

Give grasping pomp its double share,—
I ask but one recumbent chair.

Thus humble let me live and die,
Nor long for Midas' golden touch,
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,
I shall not miss them much,-
Too grateful for the blessing lent
Of simple tastes and mind content!

MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

(A Parenthesis.)

I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy, in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to me from the schoolhouse-steps.

I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume at my own risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them before the public.

I would have a woman as true as Death

At the first real lie which works from the heart out ward, she should be tenderly chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over again, even to her bones and mar row. Whether gifted with the accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them.-Proud she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride in the sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy.-She who nips off the end of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize, proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal grandfather, said a