ce got him home again, and prevailed with
him so far that he opened the book with the dried plants, he often sat
whole days, and looked sometimes at one plant and sometimes at
another, and at times the tears rolled over his cheeks: Heaven knows
what he was thinking of. But he begged us to put the book into the
coffin, and now he lies there, and in a little while the lid will be
nailed down, and he will have his quiet rest in the grave."

The face-cloth was raised, and there was peace upon the features of
the dead man, and a sunbeam played upon it; a swallow shot with arrowy
flight into the arbour, and turned rapidly, and twittered over the
dead man's head.

What a strange feeling it is--and we have doubtless all experienced
it--that of turning over old letters of the days of our youth! a new
life seems to come up with them, with all its hopes and sorrows. How
many persons with whom we were intimate in those days, are as it were
dead to us! and yet they are alive, but for a long time we have not
thought of them--of them whom we then thought to hold fast for ages,
and with whom we were to share sorrow and joy.

Here the withered oak-leaf in the book reminded the owner of the
friend, the school-fellow, who was to be a friend for life: he
fastened the green leaf in the student's cap in the green wood, when
the bond was made "for life:" where does he live now? The leaf is
preserved, but the friendship has perished! And here is a foreign
hothouse plant, too delicate for the gardens of the North; the leaves
almost seem to keep their fragrance still. She gave it to him, the
young lady in the nobleman's garden. Here is the water rose, which he
plucked himself, and moistened with salt tears--the roses of the sweet
waters. And here is a nettle--what tale may its leaves have to tell?
What were his thoughts when he plucked it and kept it? Here is a lily
of the valley, from the solitudes of the forest. Here's an evergreen
from the flower-pot of the tavern; and here's a naked sharp blade of
grass.

The blooming elder waves its fresh fragrant blossoms over the dead
man's head, and the swallow flies past again. "Pee-wit! pee-wit!" And
now the men come with nails and hammers, and the lid is laid over the
dead man, that his head may rest upon the dumb book--vanished and
scattered!

THE JEWISH GIRL.

Among the children in a charity school sat a little Jewish girl. She
was a good, intelligent child, the quickest in all the s