ur seat."
"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender,--
"I brighten at touch of your feet."

"We know the practised finger,"
Said the books, "that seems like brain";
And the shy page rustled the secret
It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered
On nightingales' throats that flew
Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz
To gather quaint dreams for you."

Ah, me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease,
The Present plucks rue for us men!
I come back: that scar unhealing
Was not in the churchyard then.

But, I think, the house is unaltered;
I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
To my life as its bed to a brook.

Unaltered! Alas for the sameness
That makes the change but more!
'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors,
'Tis his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson
Need I go to Paris and Rome,--
That the many make a household,
But only one the home?

'Twas just a womanly presence,
An influence unexprest,--
But a rose she had worn on my grave-sod
Were more than long life with the rest!

'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle,
'Twas nothing that I can phrase,--
But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,
And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine, I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside
That looks over woodland and corn.

* * * * *

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

[I did not think it probable that I should have a great many more talks
with our company, and therefore I was anxious to get as much as I could
into every conversation. That is the reason why you will find some odd,
miscellaneous facts here, which I wished to tell at least once, as I
should not have a chance to tell them habitually, at our
breakfast-table.--We're very free and easy, you know; we don't read
what we don't like. Our parish is so large, one can't pretend to preach
to all the pews at once. Besides, one can't be all the time trying to
do the best of one's best; if a company works a steam fire-engine, the
firemen needn't be straining themselves all day to squirt over the top
of the fla