e thrill, the transport, the enchanted
music that makes this earth a changed world.

SARAH WINTER KELLOGG.

AFTER A YEAR.

Dear! since they laid thee underneath the snow
But one brief year with all its days hath past.
Methought its hurrying moments flew too fast:
I would have had them lingering, move more slow;
For of the past one happy thing I know,
That thou wert of it; but these swift days flee,
And bear me to a future void of thee.
Yet still I feel that ever as I go
I know thee better, and I love thee more.
As one withdraws from a tall mountain's base
To see its summit, bright, remote and high,
So hath my heart through distance learnt its lore,
The knowledge of thy soul's most secret grace--
Those silent heights that lose themselves in sky.

KATE HILLARD.

THE BERKSHIRE LADY.

_To the Editor of Lippincot's Magazine_:

SIR: There are few pleasanter ways of passing a desultory hour than
haphazard reading amongst old numbers of a good magazine. I say
advisedly "a desultory hour," for when it comes to more than that the
habit is apt to become demoralizing. And, excellent as many English
magazines are, I must own that for this particular purpose I give
the preference to our American cousins. It would not be easy to say
precisely why, but so it is. One feels lighter after them than one
does after the same time given to their English confreres. It may be
that there is more abandon, more tumbling in them--much more of that
borderland writing (if one may use the phrase) so good, as I think,
for magazine purposes, which you skim with a kind of titillating doubt
in your mind whether it is jest or earnest--whether you are to take
seriously, or the writer intended you to take seriously, what he
is telling you; and so you may drop into a sort of dreamy
_Alice-in-Wonderland_ state, prepared to accept whatever comes next in
a purely receptive condition, and without any desire to ask questions.

It was in such a frame of mind, and with considerable satisfaction,
that I found myself some time since sitting in a friend's house with
a spare corner of time on my hands, in a comfortable armchair, and a
number of old _Lippincotts_ on the table by my side, the odds and
ends of the collection of a young countrywoman of mine of literary and
Transatlantic tastes. I glanced through some half dozen numbers taken
up at hazard, recognizing here and there an old friend--fo