the simple ingredients that make up the worldly part of our souls and
bodies be found in all their purity where nature's reservoir has never
been disturbed or its contents tainted? Why may not the subtile force
that develops the immense tulip-tree and clothes it with such a starry
mantle have power also to invigorate and intensify the life of man? "I
was rocked in a poplar trough," was the politician's boast a generation
ago. Such a declaration might mean a great deal if the sturdy, towering
strength of the tree out of which the trough was dug could have been
absorbed by the embryo Congressman. The "oldest inhabitant" of every
Western neighborhood recollects the "sugar-trough" used in the
maple-sap-gathering season, ere the genuine "sugar-camp" had been
abandoned. Young tulip-trees about fifteen inches in diameter were cut
down and their boles sawed into lengths of three feet. These were split
in two, and made into troughs by hollowing the faces and charring them
over a fire. During the bright spring days of sugar-making the young
Western mother would wrap her sturdy babe in its blanket and put it in a
dry sugar-trough to sleep while she tended the boiling syrup. A man born
sixty years ago in the region of tulip-trees and sugar-camps was
probably cradled in a "poplar" trough; and there were those born who
would now be sixty years old if they had not in unwary infancy tumbled
into the enormous rainwater-troughs with which every well-regulated
house was furnished. I have seen one or two of these having a capacity
of fifty barrels dug from a single tulip bole. In such a pitfall some
budding Washington or Lincoln may have been whelmed without causing so
much as a ripple on the surface of history.

But, turning to take leave of my stately and blooming Western beauty, I
see that she is both a blonde and a brunette. She has all the dreamy,
languid grace of the South combined with the _verve_ and force of
the North. She is dark and she is fair, with blushing cheeks and dewy
lips, sound-hearted, strong, lofty, self-reliant, a true queen of the
woods, more stately than Diana, and more vigorous than Maid Marian.

MAURICE THOMPSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

Daniel Webster's "Moods."

A late magazine-article treating of one of America's illustrious
dead--Daniel Webster--alluded to his well-known sombre moods, and the
gentle suasion by which his accomplished wife was enabled to shorten
their duration or dispel them en