in!" Of course the
necessary sums are supplied, and at last the crop gets to market. It
finds the market low, and declining steadily week by week. The banks
begin to press: money is tight, as it is now while I write. The crop is
sacrificed, for the merchant cannot wait, and some fine morning the
house of Negocier & Duthem is closed, and Colonel Beverage is bankrupt.

And both are ruined? No. We will suppose the business-house is old and
reputable: the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and
by and by the firm resumes its old career. As for the colonel, the
reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of
nature. His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his
diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming,
sanguine and splendiferous as ever. No, he cannot be ruined, but his is
not an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

* * * * *

BABES IN THE WOOD.

I had two little babes, a boy and girl--
Two little babes that are not with me now:
On one bright brow full golden fell the curl--
The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

I like to dream of them that some soft day,
Whilst wandering from home, their fitful feet
Went heedlessly through some still woodland way
Where light and shade harmoniously meet;

And that they wandered deeper and more deep
Into the forest's fragrant heart and fair,
Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,
And ever since they have been resting there.

After their willful wandering that day
Each is so tired it does not wake at all,
Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway
Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

And I, that must not join them, still am blest,
Passionately, though this poor heart grieves;
For memories, like birds, at my behest,
Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.

Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages
and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my
revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to
give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a
gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty's household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in genera