he next.

To Alice's amazement, she received on Twelfth Night a gilt valentine
envelope, within which, on heavily ruled paper, were announced these
truths:--

MARM,--The mitins wur Nora Killpatrick's. She lives inn Water
street place behind the Lager Brewery.

Yours to command,
WILLIAM FLOYD.
THOMAS MULLIGAN.
PATRICK CREHORE.

The names which they could copy from signs were correctly spelled.

To Pat's amazement, Tom Mulligan held on at the writing-school all
winter. When it ended, he wrote the best hand of any of them.

To my amazement, one evening when I looked in at Longman's, two years to
a day after Alice's tree, a bright black-eyed young man, who had tied up
for me the copy of Masson's "Milton," which I had given myself for a
Christmas present, said: "You don't remember me." I owned innocence.

"My name is Mulligan--Thomas Mulligan. Would you thank Mr. John Flagg,
if you meet him, for a Christmas present he gave me two years ago, at
Miss Alice MacNeil's Christmas-tree. It was the best present I ever had,
and the only one I ever deserved."

And I said I would do so.

* * * * *

I told Alice afterward never to think she was going to catch all the
fish there were in any school. I told her to whiten the water with
ground-bait enough for all, and to thank God if her heavenly fishing
were skilful enough to save one.

DAILY BREAD.

I.

A QUESTION OF NOURISHMENT.

"And how is he?" said Robert, as he came in from his day's work, in
every moment of which he had thought of his child. He spoke in a whisper
to his wife, who met him in the narrow entry at the head of the stairs.
And in a whisper she replied.

"He is certainly no worse," said Mary: "the doctor says, maybe a shade
better. At least," she said, sitting on the lower step, and holding her
husband's hand, and still whispering,--"at least he said that the
breathing seemed to him a shade easier, one lung seemed to him a little
more free, and that it is now a question of time and nourishment."

"Nourishment?"

"Yes, nourishment,--and I own my heart sunk as he said so. Poor little
thing, he loathes the slops, and I told the doctor so. I told him the
struggle and fight to get them down his poor little throat gave him more
flush and fever than any thing. And then he begged me not to try that
again, asked if there were really