expectations. A few rules
are worth remembering by all who attend anniversary dinners in Faneuil
Hall or elsewhere. Thus: Lobsters' claws are always acceptable to
children of all ages. Oranges and apples are to be taken one at a time,
until the coat-pockets begin to become inconveniently heavy. Cakes are
injured by sitting upon them; it is, therefore, well to carry a stout
tin box of a size to hold as many pieces as there are children in the
domestic circle. A very pleasant amusement, at the close of one of
these banquets, is grabbing for the flowers with which the table is
embellished. These will please the ladies at home very greatly, and, if
the children are at the same time abundantly supplied with fruits, nuts,
cakes, and any little ornamental articles of confectionery which are of
a nature to be unostentatiously removed, the kind-hearted parent will
make a whole household happy, without any additional expense beyond the
outlay for his ticket.

There were fragmentary delicacies enough left, of one kind and another,
at any rate, to make all the Colonel's family uncomfortable for the next
week. It bid fair to take as long to get rid of the remains of the great
party as it had taken to make ready for it.

In the mean time Mr. Bernard had been dreaming, as young men dream, of
gliding shapes with bright eyes and burning cheeks, strangely blended
with red planets and hissing meteors, and, shining over all, the white,
un-wandering star of the North, girt with its tethered constellations.

After breakfast he walked into the parlor, where he found Miss Darley.
She was alone, and, holding a school-book in her hand, was at work with
one of the morning's lessons. She hardly noticed him as he entered,
being very busy with her book,--and he paused a moment before speaking,
and looked at her with a kind of reverence. It would not have been
strictly true to call her beautiful. For years,--since her earliest
womanhood,--those slender hands had taken the bread which repaid the
toil of heart and brain from the coarse palms which offered it in the
world's rude market. It was not for herself alone that she had bartered
away the life of her youth, that she had breathed the hot air of
schoolrooms, that she had forced her intelligence to posture before
her will, as the exigencies of her place required,--waking to mental
labor,--sleeping to dream of problems,--rolling up the stone of
education for an endless twelvemonth's term, to find i