."

"Mr Silky, you'll better go home," said Mrs Greenwood, who, with the
remainder of the party, had by this time entered the room.

"Home! exactly so. I _am_ at home, my charmer--perfectly at home; and
you're at home; we're all at home. But no more wine, Mrs Greenwood;
temperance and teetotalism for ever. We are beset with temptations in
this wicked world--temptations, I say--Jemima, you're an angel! It is as
much as a man can do to preserve his uprightness." And, in proof that it
was more than he could, down rolled our hero on the floor, in a profound
stupor.

"Carry Master Silence to bed," remarked the ingenious Slap'emup, highly
tickled with the catastrophe that had befallen the too--too bashful
Silky.

A coach was procured, and he was conveyed to his lodgings, where the sun
found him in bed at noon next day. His dreams had been of the most
ghastly kind. He had fancied himself compelled, by a fiend, to swallow
huge goblets of port wine, strongly adulterated with brimstone, and
dragged about by a fury, who held his neck within a halter. The fiend
was Slap'emup--the fury, Miss Jemima Linton. He started from his dream,
and with his hand pressed against his aching head, fell to adjusting the
confused reminiscences of the previous evening's proceedings. He
remembered nothing but that he had proposed for the hand of some young
lady or other, and had been accepted. Well for him it was that memory
went no farther, or he would never have found courage to visit Mrs
Greenwood again. That he did visit her again, however, may be inferred
from an announcement which the newspapers, not many weeks after, gave to
the public:--

"Married at Edinburgh, on the 6th instant, Mr Simon Silky to Miss Jemima
Linton."

THE RECLUSE OF THE HEBRIDES.

"Still caring, despairing,
Must be my bitter doom;
My woes here shall close ne'er
But with the closing tomb."--BURNS.

I resided some years ago in the Island of Tyree, which is one of the
most western of the Hebrides; and, in the course of my business, had
often occasion to cross by the base of Ben Chinevarah, whose rugged and
sterile appearance impresses the mind with a sickening sadness. The
narrow footpath sometimes dives into the deep and sullen gloom of the
mountain glen, whose silence is unbroken, save by the torrent's red
rush, and again winds along the edge of the steep precipice, among the
loose rocks that have been hurled from their beds aloft by the giant