. I have written for the journals. I won one
of Sartain's hundred-dollar prizes--"

"And I another," interrupted I.

"When I was very poor, I won the first prize for an essay on bad boys."

"And I the second," answered I.

"I think I know one bad boy better than he knows himself," said she. But
she went on. "I watched with this poor Miss Stillingfleet the night she
died. This absurd 'distribution' had got hold of her, and she would not
be satisfied till she had transferred that strange ticket, No. 2,973, to
me, writing the indorsement which you have heard. I had had a longing to
visit New York and Hoboken again. This ticket seemed to me to beckon me.
I had money enough to come, if I would come cheaply. I wrote to my
father's business partner, and enclosed a note to his only sister. She
is Mrs. Mason. She asked me, coldly enough, to her house. Old Mr. Grills
always liked me,--he offered me escort and passage as far as Troy or
Albany. I accepted his proposal, and you know the rest."

When I told Fausta my story, she declared I made it up as I went along.
When she believed it,--as she does believe it now,--she agreed with me
in declaring that it was not fit that two people thus joined should ever
be parted. Nor have we been, ever!

She made a hurried visit at Mrs. Mason's. She prepared there for her
wedding. On the 1st of November we went into that same church which was
our first home in New York; and that dear old raven-man made us

ONE!

A PIECE OF POSSIBLE HISTORY.

[This essay was first published in the Monthly Religious Magazine,
Boston, for October, 1851. One or another professor of chronology
has since taken pains to tell me that it is impossible. But until
they satisfy themselves whether Homer ever lived at all, I shall
hold to the note which I wrote to Miss Dryasdust's cousin, which I
printed originally at the end of the article, and which will be
found there in this collection. The difficulties in the geography
are perhaps worse than those of chronology.]

A summer bivouac had collected together a little troop of soldiers from
Joppa, under the shelter of a grove, where they had spread their
sheep-skins, tethered their horses, and pitched a single tent. With the
carelessness of soldiers, they were chatting away the time till sleep
might come, and help them to to-morrow with its chances; perhaps of
fight, perhaps of another day of this camp indolen