r voice is strident, her
laugh too much like a giggle, and she has that foolish way of dancing
and bobbing like a quill-float with a "minnum" biting the hook below it,
which one sees and weeps over sometimes in persons of more pretensions.
I can't help hoping we shall put something into that empty chair yet
which will add the missing string to our social harp. I hear talk of a
rare Miss who is expected. Something in the schoolgirl way, I believe.
We shall see.

--My friend who calls himself The Autocrat has given me a caution which
I am going to repeat, with my comment upon it, for the benefit of all
concerned.

Professor,--said he, one day,--don't you think your brain will run dry
before a year's out, if you don't get the pump to help the cow? Let me
tell you what happened to me once. I put a little money into a bank,
and bought a check-book, so that I might draw it as I wanted, in sums
to suit. Things went on nicely for a time; scratching with a pen was as
easy as rubbing Aladdin's Lamp; and my blank check-book seemed to be a
dictionary of possibilities, in which I could find all the synonymes of
happiness, and realize any one of them on the spot. A check came back
to me at last with these two words on it,--NO FUNDS. My check-book was a
volume of waste-paper.

Now, Professor,--said he,--I have drawn something out of your bank,
you know; and just so sure as you keep drawing out your soul's currency
without making new deposits, the next thing will be, NO FUNDS,--and then
where will you be, my boy? These little bits of paper mean your gold and
your silver and your copper, Professor; and you will certainly break up
and go to pieces, if you don't hold on to your metallic basis.

There is something in that,--said I.--Only I rather think life can coin
thought somewhat faster than I can count it off in words. What if one
shall go round and dry up with soft napkins all the dew that falls of a
June evening on the leaves of his garden? Shall there be no more dew on
those leaves thereafter? Marry, yea,--many drops, large and round and
full of moonlight as those thou shalt have absterged!

Here am I, the Professor,--a man who has lived long enough to have
plucked the flowers of life and come to the berries,--which are not
always sad-colored, but sometimes golden-hued as the crocus of April, or
rosy-cheeked as the damask of June; a man who staggered against books as
a baby, and will totter against them, if he lives to decrepit