e marks, "Calcutta,
1805." On opening it, we found a white Cashmere shawl, with a very
brief note from the dear old gentleman opposite, saying that he had
kept this some years, thinking he might want it, and many more, not
knowing what to do with it,--that he had never seen it unfolded since
he was a young super-cargo,--and now, if she would spread it on her
shoulders, it would make him feel young to look at it.

Poor Bridget, or Biddy, our red-armed maid of all work! What must she
do but buy a small copper breast-pin and put it under "Schoolma'am's"
plate that morning, at breakfast? And Schoolma'am would wear
it,--though I made her cover it, as well as I could, with a tea-rose.

It was my last breakfast as a boarder, and I could not leave them in
utter silence.

Good-bye,--I said,--my dear friends, one and all of you! I have been
long with you, and I find it hard parting. I have to thank you for a
thousand courtesies, and above all for the patience and indulgence with
which you have listened to me when I have tried to instruct or amuse
you. My friend the Professor (who, as well as my friend the Poet, is
unavoidably absent on this interesting occasion) has given me reason to
suppose that he would occupy my empty chair about the first of January
next. If he comes among you, be kind to him, as you have been to me. May
the Lord bless you all!--And we shook hands all round the table.

Half an hour afterwards the breakfast things and the cloth were gone. I
looked up and down the length of the bare boards, over which I had so
often uttered my sentiments and experiences--and----Yes, I am a man,
like another.

All sadness vanished, as, in the midst of these old friends of mine,
whom you know, and others a little more up in the world, perhaps, to
whom I have not introduced you, I took the schoolmistress before the
altar from the hands of the old gentleman who used to sit opposite, and
who would insist on giving her away.

And now we two are walking the long path in peace together. The
"schoolmistress" finds her skill in teaching called for again, without
going abroad to seek little scholars. Those visions of mine have all
come true.

I hope you all love me none the less for anything I have told you.
Farewell!

* * * * *

THE DOT AND LINE ALPHABET.

Just in the triumph week of that Great Telegraph which takes its name
from the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, I read in the September number of th