ght end in a suspension of
maxillary functions, and the loss of the story; but here it is. Ah, me!
it is a pure white winter idyl: how shall I sing it this bright, gay
autumnal day?

It was a terrible night, that winter's night, when she and the century
were young together. The sun was lost at three o'clock: the snowy night
came down like a white sheet, that flapped around the house, beat at the
windows with its edges, and at last wrapped it in a close embrace. In
the middle of the night, they thought they heard above the wind a voice
crying, "Christus, Christus!" in a foreign tongue. They opened the
door,--no easy task in the north wind that pressed its strong shoulders
against it,--but nothing was to be seen but the drifting snow. The next
morning dawned on fences hidden, and a landscape changed and obliterated
with drift. During the day, they again heard the cry of "Christus!" this
time faint and hidden, like a child's voice. They searched in vain: the
drifted snow hid its secret. On the third day they broke a path to the
fence, and then they heard the cry distinctly. Digging down, they found
the body of a man,--a Spanish sailor, dark and bearded, with ear-rings
in his ears. As they stood gazing down at his cold and pulseless figure,
the cry of "Christus!" again rose upon the wintry air; and they turned
and fled in superstitious terror to the house. And then one of the
children, bolder than the rest, knelt down, and opened the dead man's
rough pea-jacket, and found--what think you?--a little blue-and-green
parrot, nestling against his breast. It was the bird that had echoed
mechanically the last despairing cry of the life that was given to save
it. It was the bird, that ever after, amid outlandish oaths and wilder
sailor-songs, that I fear often shocked the pure ears of its gentle
mistress, and brought scandal into the Jerseys, still retained that one
weird and mournful cry.

The sun meanwhile was sinking behind the steadfast range beyond, and I
could not help feeling that I must depart with my wants unsatisfied.
I had brought away no historic fragment: I absolutely knew little or
nothing new regarding George Washington. I had been addressed variously
by the names of different members of the family who were dead and
forgotten; I had stood for an hour in the past: yet I had not added to
my historical knowledge, nor the practical benefit of your readers. I
spoke once more of Washington, and she replied with a reminisc