ever made a greater failure in an attempt to produce a
sensation.

So the last day of summer came. It was our choice to go to the church,
but we had a kind of reception at the boarding-house. The presents were
all arranged, and among them none gave more pleasure than the modest
tributes of our fellow-boarders,--for there was not one, I believe, who
did not send something. The landlady would insist on making an elegant
bride-cake, with her own hands; to which Master Benjamin Franklin
wished to add certain embellishments out of his private funds,--namely,
a Cupid in a mouse-trap, done in white sugar, and two miniature flags
with the stars and stripes, which had a very pleasing effect, I assure
you. The landlady's daughter sent a richly bound copy of Tupper's
Poems. On a blank leaf was the following, written in a very delicate
and careful hand:--

Presented to... by...
On the eve ere her union in holy matrimony.
May sunshine ever beam o'er her!

Even the poor relative thought she must do something, and sent a copy
of "The Whole Duty of Man," bound in very attractive variegated
sheepskin, the edges nicely marbled. From the divinity-student came the
loveliest English edition of "Keble's Christian Tear." I opened it,
when it came, to the _Fourth Sunday in Lent_, and read that angelic
poem, sweeter than anything I can remember since Xavier's "My God, I
love thee."----I am not a Churchman,--I don't believe in planting oaks
in flower-pots,--but such a poem as "The Rose-bud" makes one's heart a
proselyte to the culture it grows from. Talk about it as much as you
like,--one's breeding shows itself nowhere more than in his religion. A
man should be a gentleman in his hymns and prayers; the fondness for
"scenes," among vulgar saints, contrasts so meanly with that--

"God only and good angels look
Behind the blissful scene,"--

and that other,--

"He could not trust his melting soul
But in his Maker's sight,"--

that I hope some of them will see this, and read the poem, and profit
by it.

My laughing and winking young friend undertook to procure and arrange
the flowers for the table, and did it with immense zeal. I never saw
him look happier than when he came in, his hat saucily on one side, and
a cheroot in his mouth, with a huge bunch of tea-roses, which he said
were for "Madam."

One of the last things that came was an old square box, smelling of
camphor, tied and sealed. It bore, in faded ink, th