os of the
Ashfield boys come back to him again; he hears the rustling of the
brook, the rumbling of the mill; he sees the wood standing on the hills,
and the girls at the door-yard gates; the hum of voices in the old
academy catches his ear, and the drowsy song of the locusts coming in at
the open windows all the long afternoons of August; and he watches again
the glancing feet of Rose--who was once Amanda--tripping away under the
sycamores; and the city Mortimer bethinks him of another Amanda, of
browner hue and in coquettish straw, idling along the same street, with
reticule lightly swung upon her finger; and the boy bethinks him of
tender things he might have said in the character of Mortimer, but never
did say, and of kisses he might have stolen, (in the character of
Mortimer,) but never did steal.

And now these sights, voices, vagaries, as month after month passes in
his new home, fade,--fade, yet somehow abide. The patter of a thousand
feet are on the pavement around him. What wonder, if, in the surrounding
din, the tranquillity of Ashfield, its scenes, its sounds, should seem a
mere dream of the past? What wonder, if the solemn utterances from the
old pulpit should be lost in the roar of the new voices? The few months
he was to spend in their hearing run into a score, and again into
another score. Two or three years hence we shall meet him
again,--changed, certainly; but whether for better or for worse the
sequel will show.

And Rose?--and Adele?

Well, well, we must not overleap the quiet current of our story. While
the May violets are in bloom, let us enjoy them and be thankful; and
when the autumn flowers are come to take their places, let us enjoy
those, too, and thank God.

DEEP-SEA DAMSELS.

"Once I sat upon a promontory,
And heard a mermaid, on a dolphin's back,
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath,
That the rude sea grew civil at her song;
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres
To hear the sea-maid's music."

_A Midsummer Night's Dream._

Men have a commodious faith generally, and in the things of land and
water; but they do not believe in the mermaid.

Once, a thousand years ago, a certain Arabian traveller described an
Oriental fish that came up out of the sea to catch flies or to get a
drink. It was no crabbed crustacean, no compromise of claws; but a fish
with fins,--a perch: and, being a perch, it not only came up on dr