layed her part so becomingly.
It is safe to say that each of the Annexes world have liked to be asked
the lover's last question by the very nice young man who had been a
pleasant companion at the table and elsewhere to each of them. That same
question is the highest compliment a man can pay a woman, and a woman
does not mind having a dozen or more such compliments to string on the
rosary of her remembrances. Whether either of them was glad, on the
whole, that he had not offered himself to the other in preference to
herself would be a mean, shabby question, and I think altogether
too well of you who are reading this paper to suppose that you would
entertain the idea of asking it.

It was a very pleasant occasion when the Doctor brought Avis over to
sit with us at the table where she used to stand and wait upon us. We
wondered how we could for a moment have questioned that she was one to
be waited upon, and not made for the humble office which nevertheless
she performed so cheerfully and so well.

Commencements and other Celebrations, American and English.

The social habits of our people have undergone an immense change within
the past half century, largely in consequence of the vast development of
the means of intercourse between different neighborhoods.

Commencements, college gatherings of all kinds, church assemblages,
school anniversaries, town centennials,--all possible occasions for
getting crowds together are made the most of. "'T is sixty years
since,"--and a good many years over,--the time to which my memory
extends. The great days of the year were, Election,--General Election on
Wednesday, and Artillery Election on the Monday following, at which time
lilacs were in bloom and 'lection buns were in order; Fourth of July,
when strawberries were just going out; and Commencement, a grand time
of feasting, fiddling, dancing, jollity, not to mention drunkenness
and fighting, on the classic green of Cambridge. This was the season of
melons and peaches. That is the way our boyhood chronicles events. It
was odd that the literary festival should be turned into a Donnybrook
fair, but so it was when I was a boy, and the tents and the shows and
the crowds on the Common were to the promiscuous many the essential
parts of the great occasion. They had been so for generations, and it
was only gradually that the Cambridge Saturnalia were replaced by the
decencies and solemnities of the present sober anniversary.

Nowaday