d laying hold of a wreath of violets that the young girl had been
braiding, he solemnly placed it on her head.

"You will make her too vain," said Mrs. Wolston.

"Ah mamma, do not scold," and gracefully taking the crown from her own
fair curls, she placed it on the silvery locks of her mother; "I
abdicate in your favor, and, sweetheart, I thank you for placing our
dynasty on the throne. Mary, you are a princess."

"Yes," she replied, "and here is my sceptre," holding up her spindle.

"Well answered, my daughter, that is a woman's best sceptre, and her
kingdom is her house."

"Our conversation," said Becker, "is like those small threads of water
which, flowing humbly from the hollow of a rock, swell into brooks,
then become rivers, and, finally, lose themselves in the ocean."

"It was Ernest that led us on."

"Well, it is time now to get back to your starting-point again. God
has said that we shall earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, and
consequently that our enjoyments should be the result of our own
industry; that is the reason that venison is given to us in the form
of the swift stag, and palaces in the form of clay; man is endowed
with reason, and may, by labor, convert all these blessings to his
use."

"Your notion," said Mr. Wolston, "of drawing the fish out of the sea
ready cooked, puts me in mind of an incident of college life which,
with your permission, I will relate."

"Oh yes, papa, a story!"

"There was at Cambridge, when I was there, a young man, who, instead
of study and sleep, spent his days and nights in pistol practice and
playing on the French horn, much to the annoyance of an elderly maiden
lady, who occupied the apartments that were immediately under his
own."

"These are inconveniences that need not be dreaded here."

"Our police are too strict."

"And our young men too well-bred," added Mrs. Wolston.

"Not only that," continued Mr. Wolston, "this young student, who never
thought of study, had a huge, shaggy Newfoundland dog, and the old
lady possessed a chubby little pug, which she was intensely fond of;
now, when these two brutes happened to meet on the stairs, the large
one, by some accident or other, invariably sent the little one rolling
head over heels to the bottom; and, much to the horror of the old
lady, her favorite, that commenced its journey down stairs with four
legs, had sometimes to make its way up again with three."

"I always understood that dogs were generou