ts plentifully provided with squeak-leather. When Miss Tucker
slipped a little piece of paper into my hand, as I made a hollow show of
passing her the sandwiches, I came very near dropping the plate; and
when I had a chance to open it unobserved, and read the words, "Are you
mad with me?" I could not occupy my cold and dreary pinnacle a moment
longer, but sought an early opportunity of squeezing her hand two seats
behind the voluminous asylum of Briggs's toes, and whispering, slightly
confused by intensity of feeling, that if I had done any thing I was
sorry for, I was willing to be forgiven. From that moment I was Miss
Tucker's slave. Oh, woman, woman! The string on which you play us is as
long as life; it ties your baby-bib; it laces your queenly bodice; and
on its slenderest tag we dangle everywhere!--_Little Briggs and I._
(_From Little Brother and Other Genre Pictures_.)

SELECTIONS FROM A BRACE OF BOYS.

I am a bachelor uncle. That, as a mere fact, might happen to anybody;
but I am a bachelor uncle by internal fitness. I am one essentially,
just as I am an individual of the Caucasian division of the human race;
and if, through untoward circumstances,--which Heaven forbid,--I should
lose my present position, I shouldn't be surprised if you saw me out in
the _Herald_ under "Situations Wanted--Males." Thanks to a marrying
tendency in the rest of my family, I have now little need to advertise,
all the business being thrown into my way which a single member of my
profession can attend to....

I meander, like a desultory, placid river of an old bachelor as I am,
through the flowery mead of several nurseries. I am detained by all the
little roots that run down into me to drink happiness, but I linger
longest among the children of my sister Lu.

Lu married Mr. Lovegrove. He is a merchant, retired with a fortune
amassed by the old-fashioned, slow processes of trade, and regards the
mercantile life of the present day only as so much greed and gambling
Christianly baptized.... Lu is my favorite sister; Lovegrove an
unusually good article of brother-in-law and I cannot say that any of my
nieces and nephews interest me more than their two children, Daniel and
Billy, who are more unlike than words can paint them. They are far apart
in point of years; Daniel is twenty-two, Billy eleven. I was reminded of
this fact the other day by Billy, as he stood between my legs, scowling
at his book of sums.

"'A boy has eighty-five t