alth
and happiness. He was a good patriot, and eagerly asked the latest news
of the war. He had also pleasant reminiscences to relate of a Carolina
Senator, who, with his family, had one summer beneath his roof sought
health and strength under the shadow of the Catskills.

'A lively lad and fleet team soon placed us at the gate, which the stage
from the boat was just passing. The little rest and drive had greatly
invigorated us, and we bravely pushed on to the summit, outstripping the
heavy coach, and reaching the top of the mountain just as the red rays
of the setting sun were flushing the hills with crimson. The hour was
too late to risk the dark path through the wood, and we continued upon
the main highway, making but one deviation down a stony road, and over
Spruce Creek, until we reached the Laurel House, where the twilight was
still lingering, and where we found our friends a little anxious.'

'I do not wonder,' said Aunt Sarah. 'Such vagaries are enough to keep a
whole household in a chronic state of anxiety. And I really cannot see
what you had gained!'

'I have only given you a simple statement of the facts,' replied Elsie;
'to know our feelings by the way, the delight we experienced, all we
learned, including geography and topography, and the life and health we
drank in at every step, you must take that very same walk.'

'More inscrutable mysteries!' returned Aunt Sarah.

'Yes,' said Lucy D----, 'inscrutable, and yet subtilely vivifying as the
breath of their Author, the Great Architect of this glorious universe.'

OUR GOVERNMENT AND THE BLACKS.

All thoughtful minds are profoundly conscious that the problems of war
are not the last and most important to be solved in our national
affairs. It is clear enough that this great convulsion must end; and
end, too, in the total extinction of that stupendous system of iniquity
in the interests of which it was projected. President Lincoln's
Proclamation of emancipation throughout rebeldom, and the recent order
to enlist the slaves throughout the Border States in military service to
the Government, emancipating all thus enlisted, whether slaves of loyal
or disloyal masters, with the certainty that there is to be no cessation
to the grand achievements of our arms short of the completest success,
all conspire to assure us that the dreadful _disorder_ hitherto
consuming our national vitals is to pass finally away in the convulsive
_disease_ of its last throes