If God has given to any woman fingers more dextrous with the brush of the artist, or the pen of the scribe, or the lancet of the physician than with the needle, the brain for deep thought and patient study, the soul-love for music, be the gift what it may, even let her paint, write, sing, do the thing for which she was made, as does the bee and the flower; and God bless and keep her, for her tender feet tread ways that are hard for men. If a woman has hands prompt to cut and dextrous to sew, an eye for the component parts of a pudding, and an intelligence to regulate the workings of a household, and the sewing, and cooking, and system, are that for which she lives, then are her aims indeed narrow, and she unworthy to be the mother of heroes; or if she is held of them as a serf, and makes existence a perpetual sullen mutiny, her life is profitless; but if she have eyes to see, and ears to hear, let her take heart of grace, and a lesson from a tree; that at prompting of the spring pushes forth a leaf bravely here and another there, never bemoaning itself about the time needed for their rounding out, or taking thought about the sap, or that one leaf is so like another, or that many are needed to mantle it with verdure, or that they are on a different fashion from the oak and pine; or in the belief that leaves are the object of its growing, putting forth all its strength in one monster leaf, but catches a glint of sunshine where it can, and treasures shadow and coolness as well, to wave and rustle them forth again out on the parched and dusty road, by which it stands a blessing and a delight. The old lamp is on every cornice, even the lowest. The genii are ready at your touch, and its soft flame has an alchemy that makes the dullest duties golden; and shining on through the dim future shows you there the riddle troubling you now fairly written out in letters of promise. Little things are God's levers; pay them due respect. Small duties are all of royal birth, kings in disguise, and be sure that you have a wedding garment, for you know not the day when one may throw aside his fisher's robes and stand before you Haroun Al Raschid. Moreover good works and words and thoughts have this pre-eminence over bad and weak ones: they are immortal and life-producing. Ever so little seed, in ever so barren soil, is sure at last of a harvest, and a joyous one; the blessing, however small, is always ont at compound interest, and you get the interest in this life and punctually; for though individuals may be knavish it is astonishing how honest is the world in the aggregate. Good measure of such measure as ye mete shall men give you, shaken together, pressed down, and running over; and if just now appreciation prove short-sighted as to your whereabouts, why you have only to fall hopefully into line with the poets, the wits, the leading minds, the master spirits, the purest saints of every age. Patient weary workers, in the nursery, at the needle, in the schools, whoever and wherever you may be, keep your lamp trimmed with patience, and in the end it shall shine on your exceeding great reward; but for those who barter old lamps for new, the copper lamps burn with but a feeble flicker, and are soon out; and is there not an old story of five foolish virgins who were found without oil in their lamps? THE HEART'S LONGINGS. ASLENDER shaft of sunset gold Came gliding slant wise through my room, The hearth was naked, blank, and cold; The walls seemed tapestried with gloom. The clock upon the mantle's shelf Ticked ever wearily and slow; The heart within my weary self Responded feebly, faint, and low. And flitting through my idle brain And childhood with its smiles and tears; The hopes which came with boyhood's time; The dreams of youth so fair and bright; And lusty manhood's vigorous prime The athlete fitted for the fight. And musing on the Past, I said: "Oh heart, what makes thee beat so low!Are all thy hopes, long cherished, dead? What useful longings fill thee now ?" And from within a voice replied: "Oh give me back the smiles and tears Of childhood, and from far and wide The scattered hopes of boyhood's years! "Oh give me back the dreams of youth, The friends who gathered round me then, The early freshness and the truth Which doubted not my fellow-men! "Where are the castles that I reared, And where the fame I thought to find? My boy-wreath's once green leaves are seared By Disappointment's frosty wind. "Where are the ships I sent to sea, The golden spires I raised so high? My ships, they never come back to me; The spires, they melted in the sky. "Where is the wife I would possess; The children climbing to her knees To share their mother's fond caress? Ah, more than all I long for these!" Oh cease, sad heart! your chambers all Are vacant, lone, and drear, I know; Yet on each blank and naked wall Shall shine a sudden sunset glow. For Life is never always dark: No one by fate is so accurst But somewhere lurks a hidden spark That into flame will sometime burst. ΟΥΕΙ OUR MUTUAL FRIEND. BY CHARLES DICKENS. IN FOUR BOOKS.-BOOK THE FIRST. THE CUP AND THE LIP. CHAPTER V. BOFFIN'S BOWER. but also that he was one of the house's retainers and owed vassalage to it and was bound to leal and loyal interest in it. For this reason, he always spoke of it as "Our House," and, though his knowledge of its affairs was mostly speculative and all wrong, claimed to be in its confidence. On similar grounds he never beheld an inmate at any one of its windows but he touched his hat. Yet, he knew so little about the inmates that he gave them names of his own invention: as "Miss Elizabeth," "Master George," "Aunt Jane," "Uncle Parker"—having no authority whatever for any such designations, but particularly the last-to which, as a natural consequence, he stuck with great obstinacy. VER against a London house, a corner house not far from Cavendish Square, a man with a wooden leg had sat for some years, with his remaining foot in a basket in cold weather, picking up a living on this wise:-Every morning at eight o'clock he stumped to the corner, carrying a chair, a clothes-horse, a pair of trestles, a board, a basket, and an umbrella, all strapped together. Separating these, the board and trestles became a counter, the basket supplied the few small lots of fruit and sweets that he offered for sale upon it and became a foot-warmer, the unfolded clothes-horse displayed a choice collection of half-penny ballads and became a screen, and the stool planted within it became his post for the rest of the day. All weathers saw the man at the post. This is to be accepted in a double sense, for he contrived a back to his wooden stool by placing it against the lamp-post. When the weather was wet, he put up his umbrella over his stock in trade, noting to a plan of his own. It was a great dingy over himself; when the weather was dry, he furled that faded article, tied it round with a piece of yarn, and laid it cross-wise under the trestles: where it looked like an unwholesomelyforced lettuce that had lost in color and crispness what it had gained in size. He had established his right to the corner, by imperceptible prescription. He had never varied his ground an inch, but had in the beginning diffidently taken the corner upon which the side of the house gave. A howling corner in the winter time, a dusty corner in the summer time, an undesirable corner at the best of times. Shelterless fragments of straw and paper got up revolving storms there, when the main street was at peace; and the water-cart, as if it were drunk or short-sighted, came blundering and jolting round it, making it muddy when all else was clean. On the front of his sale-board hung a little placard, like a kettle-holder, bearing the inscription in his own small text: Errands gone Ladies and Gentlemen Your humble Serv2: He had not only settled it with himself in course of time, that he was errand-goer by appointment to the house at the corner (though he received such commissions not half a dozen times in a year, and then only as some servant's deputy), Over the house itself he exercised the same imaginary power as over its inhabitants and their affairs. He had never been in it, the length of a piece of fat black water-pipe which trailed itself over the area-door into a damp stone passage, and had rather the air of a leech on the house that had "taken" wonderfully; but this was no impediment to his arranging it accord house with a quantity of dim side window and blank back premises, and it cost his mind a world of trouble so to lay it out as to account for every thing in its external appearance. But, this once done, was quite satisfactory, and he rested persuaded, that he knew his way about the house blindfold: from the barred garrets in the high roof, to the two iron extinguishers before the main door-which seemed to request all lively visitors to have the kindness to put themselves out, before entering. Assuredly, this stall of Silas Wegg's was the hardest little stall of all the sterile little stalls in London. It gave you the face-ache to look at his apples, the stomach-ache to look at his oranges, the tooth-ache to look at his nuts. Of the latter commodity he had always a grim little heap, on which lay a little wooden measure which had no discernible inside, and was considered to represent the penn'orth appointed by Magna Charta. Whether from too much east wind or no-it was an easterly corner-the stall, the stock, and the keeper, were all as dry as the Desert. Wegg was a knotty man, and a closegrained, with a face carved out of very hard material, that had just as much play of expression as a watchman's rattle. When he laughed, certain jerks occurred in it, and the rattle sprung. Sooth to say, he was so wooden a man that he seemed to have taken his wooden leg naturally, and rather suggested to the fanciful observer, that he might be expected-if his development received no untimely check-to be completely set up with a pair of wooden legs in about six months. Mr. Wegg was an observant person, or, as he | himself said, " took a powerful sight of notice." He saluted all his regular passers-by every day, as he sat on his stool backed up by the lamppost; and on the adaptable character of these salutes he greatly plumed himself. Thus, to the rector, he addressed a bow, compounded of lay deference, and a slight touch of the shady preliminary meditation at church; to the doctor, a confidential bow, as to a gentleman whose acquaintance with his inside he begged respectfully to acknowledge; before the Quality he de lighted to abase himself; and for Uncle Parker, who was in the army (at least, so he had settled it), he put his open hand to the side of his hat, in a military manner which that angry-eyed, buttoned-up inflammatory-faced old gentleman appeared but imperfectly to appreciate. The only article in which Silas dealt, that was not hard, was gingerbread. On a certain day, some wretched infant having purchased the damp gingerbread-horse (fearfully out of condition), and the adhesive bird-cage, which had been exposed for the day's sale, he had taken a tin box THE BIRD OF PREY.-[SEE CHAPTER 1.] from under his stool to produce a relay of those dreadful specimens, and was going to look in at the lid, when he said to himself, pausing: "Oh! Here you are again!" The words referred to a broad, round-shouldered, one-sided old fellow in mourning, coming comically ambling toward the corner, dressed in a pea over-coat, and carrying a large stick. He wore thick shoes, and thick leather gaiters, and thick gloves like a hedger's. Both as to his dress and to himself he was of an overlapping rhinoceros build, with folds in his cheeks, and his forehead, and his eyelids, and his lips, and his ears; but with bright, eager, childishly-inquiring, gray eyes, under his ragged eyebrows, and broad brimmed hat. A very odd-looking old fellow altogether. "Here you are again," repeated Mr. Wegg, musing. "And what are you now? Are you in the Funns, or where are you? Have you lately come to settle in this neighborhood, or do you own to another neighborhood? Are you in independent circumstances, or is it wasting the motions of a bow on you? Come! I'll speculate! I'll invest a bow in you!" Which Mr. Wegg, having replaced his tin box, accordingly did, as he rose to bait his gingerbread-trap for some other devoted infant. The salute was acknowledged with: "Morning, Sir! Morning! Morning!" ("Calls me Sir!" said Mr. Wegg, to himself. | persons that would not view it with the same ob"He won't answer. A bow gone!") jections. I don't know why," Mr. Wegg added, anticipating another question. 66 Morning, morning, morning!" "Appears to be rather a 'arty old cock, too," said Mr. Wegg, as before. "Good-morning to you, Sir." "Do you remember me, then?" asked his new acquaintance, stopping in his amble, one-sided, before the stall, and speaking in a pouncing way, though with great good-humor. "I have noticed you go past our house, Sir, several times in the course of the last week or so. ." "Our house," repeated the other. "Meaning-?" "Yes," said Mr. Wegg, nodding, as the other pointed the clumsy forefinger of his right glove at the corner house. "Oh! Now, what," pursued the old fellow, in an inquisitive manner, carrying his knotted stick in his left arm as if it were a baby, "what do they allow you now?" "It's job work that I do for our house," returned Silas, dryly, and with reticence; "it's not yet brought to an exact allowance." "Oh! It's not yet brought to an exact allowance? No! It's not yet brought to an exact allowance. Oh!-Morning, morning, morning!" "Appears to be rather a cracked old cock," thought Silas, qualifying his former good opinion, as the other ambled off. But, in a moment he was back again with the question: dy. fin. "Noddy Boffin," said that gentleman. "NodThat's my name. Noddy-or Nick-BofWhat's your name?" "Silas Wegg.-I don't," said Mr. Wegg, bestirring himself to take the same precaution as before, “I don't know why Silas, and I don't know why Wegg." "Now, Wegg," said Mr. Boffin, hugging his stick closer, "I want to make a sort of offer to you. Do you remember when you first see me?" The wooden Wegg looked at him with a meditative eye, and also with a softened air as descrying possibility of profit. "Let me think. I ain't quite sure, and yet I generally take a powerful sight of notice, too. Was it on a Monday morning, when the butcher-boy had been to our house for orders, and bought a ballad of me, which, being unacquainted with the tune, I run it over to him?" Right, Wegg, right! But he bought more than one." "Yes, to be sure, Sir; he bought several; and wishing to lay out his money to the best, he took my opinion to guide his choice, and we went over the collection together. To be sure we did. Here was him as it might be, and here was myself as it might be, and there was you, Mr. Boffin, as you identically are, with your self-same stick under your very same arm, and your very same "How did you get your wooden leg?" Mr. Wegg replied (tartly to this personal in- back toward us. To-be-sure!" added Mr. quiry), "In an accident." "Do you like it ?" Wegg, looking a little round Mr. Boffin, to take him in the rear, and identify this last extraordi "Well! I haven't got to keep it warm," Mr.nary coincidence, "your wery self-same back." Wegg made answer, in a sort of desperation occasioned by the singularity of the question. "What do you think I was doing, Wegg?" "I should judge, Sir, that you might be glan "No, Wegg. I was a-listening." "He hasn't," repeated the other to his knot-cing your eye down the street." ted stick, as he gave it a hug; "he hasn't gotha!-ha!-to keep it warm! Did you ever hear of the name of Boffin?" "No," said Mr. Wegg, who was growing restive under this examination. "I never did hear of the name of Boffin." "Was you, indeed ?" said Mr. Wegg, dubiously. "Not in a dishonorable way, Wegg, because you was singing to the butcher; and you wouldn't sing secrets to a butcher in the street, you know." "It never happened that I did so yet, to the best of my remembrance," said Mr. Wegg, cautiously. "But I might do it. A man can't say what he might wish to do some day or another." (This, not to release any little advantage he might derive from Mr. Boffin's avowal.) "Well," repeated Boffin, "I was a-listening to you and to him. And what do you—you haven't got another stool, have you? I'm rath "I can't help it!" returned Mr. Wegg. Im-er thick in my breath." plying in his manner the offensive addition, "and if I could, I wouldn't." "But there's another chance for you," said Mr. Boffin, smiling still, "Do you like the name of Nicodemus? Think it over. Nick, or Noddy." "It is not, Sir," Mr. Wegg rejoined, as he sat down on his stool, with an air of gentle resignation, combined with melancholy candor; "it is not a name as I could wish any one that I had a respect for, to call me by; but there may be "I haven't got another, but you're welcome to this," said Wegg, resigning it. "It's a treat to me to stand." "Lard!" exclaimed Mr. Boffin, in a tone of great enjoyment, as he settled himself down, still nursing his stick like a baby, "it's a pleasant place, this! And then to be shut in on each side, with these ballads, like so many book-leaf blinkers! Why, it's delightful!" "If I am not mistaken, Sir," Mr. Wegg deli |