ng the same sweet stave,
Her lights and airs are given,
Alike, to playground and the grave,--
And over both is Heaven.

* * * * *

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

EVERY MAN HIS OWN BOSWELL.

[I am so well pleased with my boarding-house that I intend to remain
there, perhaps for years. Of course I shall have a great many
conversations to report, and they will necessarily be of different tone
and on different subjects. The talks are like the breakfasts,--sometimes
dipped toast, and sometimes dry. You must take them as they come. How
can I do what all these letters ask me to? No. 1. wants serious and
earnest thought. No. 2. (letter smells of bad cigars) must have more
jokes; wants me to tell a "good storey" that he has copied out for me.
(I suppose two letters before the word "good" refer to some Doctor of
Divinity who told the story.) No. 3. (in female hand)--more poetry. No.
4. wants something that would be of use to a practical man.
(_Prahctical mahn_ he probably pronounces it.) No. 5. (gilt-edged,
sweet-scented)--"more sentiment,"--"heart's outpourings."----

My dear friends, one and all, I can do nothing but report such remarks
as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table. Their character will
depend on many accidents,--a good deal on the particular persons in
the company to whom they were addressed. It so happens that those
which follow were mainly intended for the divinity-student and the
school-mistress; though others, whom I need not mention, saw fit to
interfere, with more or less propriety, in the conversation. This is one
of my privileges as a talker; and of course, if I was not talking for
our whole company, I don't expect all the readers of this periodical to
be interested in my notes of what was said. Still, I think there may be
a few that will rather like this vein,--possibly prefer it to a livelier
one,--serious young men, and young women generally, in life's roseate
parenthesis from ---- years of age to ---- inclusive.

Another privilege of talking is to misquote.--Of course it wasn't
Proserpina that actually cut the yellow hair,--but _Iris_. It was the
former lady's regular business, but Dido had used herself ungenteelly,
and Madame d'Enfer stood firm on the point of etiquette. So the
bathycolpian Here--Juno, in Latin--sent down Iris instead. But I was
mightily pleased to see that one of the gentlemen that do the heavy
articles for this magazi