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do penance for thy sin." I will rather give him my hand and help him arise. I will set him up again, and I will back him against all takers that he never slips again.

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," saith another poet; but he meant good, not bad nature, for he knew full well how to set communities by the ears with his sharp sayings. To-day it is the sister against her brother, the son against his father, and the world is so full of evil, if we might believe the scandal-mongers, that no good will ever exist again in it.

"Let those who dance pay the piper," says Wordly-mindedness, and he chuckles as he says it for a sharp thing. But there are some who like dancing that have not the wherewithal, and to those I offer my purse. If a man fall down, I am not going to jump upon his back and jeer him. He has danced, and cannot pay now; but what of that? Some day he will.

Here is one hand and one heart that shall never betray. Come to me, ye scandal-torn and society-ridden. Come to me, ye whom venomous tongues have harried, and ye whose characters hang in shreds about you, come also. Ye have faults, and so have I. Somewhere ye have good traits, and these are what I respect.

of them that sit in council, and hold foul revelry over their neighbors' shortcomings; they shall read of our resolutions, and there shall be no comfort in the cup of tea any more which Tabbies sip delectably, while they tear Miss Bright-eyes to pieces. There shall lurk a maggot in the shreds of dried beef which these modern ghouls, rend, as they rend my fair name; and may the biscuits be as heavy upon their stomachs as tale-bearing shall one day be upon their consciences.

Thou shalt not bear false witness.

If I am unlike you, gentle reader, guiltless of this crying sin, I know you will not condemn me, will not decry me, make little of me, or seek to poison men's minds against me. You will have that charity for me which is not puffed up; and where I err, or you are ignorant of my motive, hold your peace.

To-day there are dear ones in exile,, or in the bonds of sin, for this very practice. There are lives hopelessly lost to virtue, and others imbittered forever. Families are separated, and high hopes and aspirations crushed, while the fountains of affection which should be filled to the brim afford only: a trickling stream, or, worse still, foul lees which never will subside. There are shadows in many homes, and empty chairs that never will be filled. The Let us defy the "they-says," and as child on the floor misses its playfellow, for those whose shibboleth is, "I have the wife her husband, the mother her it upon good authority," we will give son, the betrothed her lover, and still them the go-by. the tale-bearers go upon their rounds, We will laugh to see the tribulation and their feet never, never rest.

THERE

THE ROSE ROLLINS.

PART L

HERE lived a few years ago in one of the small seaport towns of New England a solitary, friendless man, of the name of John Chidlaw, — a gray-headed, stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested person of about fifty years of age at the time our story begins. He was sober, steady, and industrious, and always had been so since his first appearance in the place, but somehow he never got ahead. He was thrift less, people used to say, and they got in the habit of calling him "Johnny," and then "Old Johnny," until nobody called him anything else, unless it were here and there some poor child or sympathetic woman, who said "Uncle Johnny," with that sort of gentle kindness that is never bestowed on the prosperous.

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He did not resent anything, even pity, but took his hard fortune as a matter of course, and the heavier the burden, why, the more he bent his shoulders, but he did not complain. Nobody had ever asked his history, — the history of a man who has patches at his knees, and whose elbows are out, is not, by those more fortunate persons who have no patches at their knees, and whose elbows are not out, generally supposed to be of an interesting character. John Chidlaw was, therefore, never bothered with questions.

Could he lift a heavy log? Could he tend a saw-mill? Could he drive a team, or carry a hod of bricks? These, and the like, were the questions that were asked him mostly; and as he could say yes to any and all of these, and as people did not require him to say more, he seldom did say more, but lifted the log, or drove the team, as the case might be, in silence.

He looked a good deal older than he was, not that his head was so gray, and not that his shoulders bent

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so much, but the rather that there was an utter absence of buoyancy, an indurated and inflexible style and expression about the whole man, as if, in fact, he had been born old. You could not think of him as having ever been a boy, with cherry cheeks, and laughing eyes, and steps that were careless and fleet as the wind, but he had had his boyhood and his boyhood's dream, as will appear by and by.

It had happened to him at one time that a saw had gone into his hand, and left a jagged and ugly scar across the back; another time it had happened that his horse had run away, upsetting his cart, and breaking one of his legs, so that he limped thereafter, and was disabled from some of the harder kinds of work he had been used to do. He had been dismissed by one and another, in consequence of his inability to make a full day's work, and was sitting one day on a pile of bricks in the outer edge of the town where he lived, quite down-hearted, and chewing, not the cud of sweet and bitter fancies, but, instead thereof, a bit of pine stick, which he held partly in and partly out of his mouth.

His eyes looked solemnly out from under his gray eyebrows as now and then a whistling teamster drove by, throwing a whole cloud of hot, suffocating dust over him. Sometimes a pedler, or some stroller with a monkey on his shoulder and an organ on his back, would nod to him as he passed; but the pedler did not think of exhibiting his wares, nor the organman of grinding out a tune, or of setting his monkey to playing tricks, for the like of old Johnny. The sun was growing large toward the setting, and nothing had turned up, when all at once there was a wild whirl of wheels, and a crying and shouting and holding up of hands by all the men and

boys along the road. A horse was running away. On he came, galloping furiously, while the old heavytopped buggy to which he was attached rattled and creaked and swayed from side to side frightfully, - frightfully, because it was in imminent danger of being crushed all to pieces; and sitting still and solemnly upright, swaying with the buggy, and in imminent danger of being crushed to pieces too, was a child, -a beautiful little girl, with a cloud of yellow curls rippling down her bare shoulders. Her white dress fluttered in the wind, and her hat was swimming on the pond half a mile in the rear; but still she sat, sober and quiet as though she had been on her mother's knees, and not so much as puckering her pretty lip for all the tumult and fright.

A dozen men were in the road, some with rails in their arms, with which they no doubt intended to intercept the mad creature; but the best intentions fail sometimes, and the men with rails in their arms threw them down, and got themselves out of the way, as soon as the danger came near them.

John Chidlaw went into the road among the rest, but without a rail in his arms. He did not, however, get himself out of the way, not he. He threw himself with might and main upon the neck of the frightened beast, and there he held, and was dragged along, half the time, as it seemed, under his very feet.

"That's you, Johnny!" "Go it!" "Good for you!" were the cheers and calls of encouragement that followed him. The horse was valuable, and he was in danger of breaking his neck; and what matter about John Chidlaw! He had no friends!

He required not to be thus stimulated, if they had but known it: he had been stimulated sufficiently already, by the tossing hair and fair face of the little girl, to peril his life, and he was not the man to look back when he had his hand to the plough.

The blood besmeared his face, and

streamed down his neck, and wet his shirt-bosom and sleeves, and still the voices cried, "Hold on, Johnny!

They thought he was being battered to death, though the blood was from the mouth of the horse, for the entire weight of the man was being dragged by the bit.

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At the toll-gate an old woman ran out with a broom, she could have shut the gate, but did not, and when Johnny had stopped the horse, which he did a little farther on, she told him that but for his being in the way she could have stopped the beast at once, and that, if he was as badly battered as he seemed, she would be at the pains of getting the poor-house cart, and seeing that he was carted away! The old carriage was surrounded in a few minutes, and the child lifted out, and kissed and coaxed, and petted and praised, and fed with candies and cakes, and handed from the arms of one to another; and the feet and legs of the horse were carefully examined, and he was dashed with cool water, and combed and rubbed, and petted and patted, and given a variety of either grand or endearing names; but nobody looked after Johnny, and the only kindness shown him was that of the old woman with the broom.

But even Fortune tires of frowning at last, and the time of her relenting toward John Chidlaw was at hand.

He was washing the blood from his face in a wayside puddle, when the man who owned the horse and buggy came breathlessly up. "My good friend," he said, slapping him on the shoulder, "you have saved my child's life!" And then his hand slipped from shoulder to waist, and he positively hugged the astonished Johnny, who was almost awe-struck at first, for the hugger was well to do, and he that was hugged was exceeding poor, as the reader knows.

"My name," he said, introducing himself, "is Hilton, David Hilton, and I keep the ferry at the lower end of the town; should n't wonder if I could put business in your way! You can

turn your hand to a'most anything, I reckon, a man of your build mostly

can."

A fortnight later, and John Chidlaw 'was the master of a little black sailboat not much bigger than a canoe, and his business was to carry butchers' meat, bread, poultry, and vege'tables from the market-town in which he lived to the great hotels situated on the hills above the opposite shore. His boat had, therefore, in his eyes, 'somewhat the dignity of a merchant'man; and as he was entitled to a part of the profits of the trade he carried 'on, he was at once a proud and a "happy man.' He had christened his boat "The Rose Rollins," and kept her as neat and trim as she could be. He wore a sailor's jacket, from professional pride, and used all the nautical phrases he could muster. His shoulders got the better of their stoop, and his chest of its hollowness, in a wonderfully short time; and one day, when he was asked about the scar on his hand, he answered that he had been bitten by a whale when he was a young man at sea. It will be perceived that he was gaining confidence, and growing in worldly wisdom. The · questioner was a very timid person, but she said she guessed she could : trust herself with an old sailor like that, and at once went aboard. She was a milliner, laden with boxes for the ladies in the opposite hotels, and was the first female passenger the master of the Rose had had; his legitimate trade was merchandise, and not the transportation of men and women; but occasionally, as his confidence grew, he had taken a passenger or two across the ferry, on his own hook, as he phrased it.

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"I took such a wiolent fancy to the name o' your wessel," says the milliner, "and that is how I come to take passage with you. Ain't she a nice little thing, though?

་ ། "Trim as a gal o' sixteen!" says John. "But had n't you better unlade yourself o' your merchandise, and fix to enjoy the sail some?" and

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he began taking the boxes from her lap.

"O sir, you're wery good!" says the milliner, quite blushing. And then she adjusted her skirts, and flirted them about as she adjusted them, and then she untied her bonnet-strings and knotted them up again, for nothing in the world but the pleasure of tying knots in ribbon apparently; but John Chidlaw thought he had never in his life seen such a graceful and enchanting performance. He brought his jacket directly, and offered to spread it over the board on which she was sitting.

"Oh, you're wery good, wery good, I am sure, sir,—but I'm a-givin' you too much trouble!"-and, saying so, she partly rose and allowed the seat to be cushioned as proposed. The wind caught the bright ribbons, and fluttered them in the man's face as he was thus employed.

"Oh!" says the milliner, with a little start; and then she says, "The nasty winds have such a wulgar way of catchin' up a body's things"; and she pulls back the innocent strings and holds them against her bosom by main force.

"Pray, miss, don't haul 'em round that way on my account; they didn't hurt me none! Why, I thought 't was a butterfly at fust, and then I thought 't was a hummin'-bird, and them was allers pleasin' things to me, both on 'em."

The woman was flattered. In the first place' she was not young,- not much younger than he, in fact, -- and he had addressed her as "miss"; and in the next place his comparing her ribbons to butterflies and hummingbirds seemed the same as a personal compliment.

"O Captain!" she says, coloring up, "did you think so, werily?"—and then she changes the subject, and talks about the appearance of the clouds, and the prospect of rain. "I suppose you old sailors can tell, purty much," she says, "whether it's a-goin' to rain, or whether the clouds will ewaporate into

mist; and I should really walue your judgment, for if my things should git wet, you see, it would cost me a wery considerable sum!"

"I'll just take an obserwation!" says John; and he set his foot on a breadbasket, and cocked up one eye, He had never given the sound of w to his before, but he had noticed that his fair passenger did so, and he adopted the pronunciation, partly in gallantry, partly because it struck him as elegant. While he was taking the observation, a bright thought came to him. "I guess we shall have foul weather afore long," says he, "When the clouds hev sich disjinted shapes as they hev this mornin', it's generally portentous; but I can knock up a canvas kiver in a minute, and if it still looks like fur rain when we go into port, why, I would adwise you just to stay aboard, it sha'n't cost you a cent more, not if you make a dozen trips!”

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"I'm sure I'm wery much obliged, Captain, and I'll take your adwice when we come to port, and if the weather still looks wacillating, I won't wenter ashore. It would n't be worth while to risk my goods, some of 'em welwets, too, of great walue !”

"The keepin' on 'em aboard sha'n't cost you nothin'," says John, "if that 'll be any object to you."

He wished to convey the idea, that, to a person of her fabulous wealth, dealing in velvets and the like, a fare more or less could not possibly be an object, and at the same time to show a magnanimous disposition on his own part.

"Money is money," says the milliner, "there is no denying of that; and it has its adwantages, on account o' which I set a certain walue upon it; but just for its own sake I can't say that I do walue it, — not over and above!"

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"I hev n't hed no great on 't," says John, "but I've hed enough, sense I've come into business, to know that if I hed to keep it a-chinkin' into my pocket I should n't value it much.”

Then he corrected himself, and said walue.

"I'll tell you how money is waluable

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to me," says the milliner, "if I may wenter so far?"

"Most certainly!" exclaimed John. You could n't venter nothin' that would n't be to your credit,- I'll vouch a fippenny bit on that!"

Then he repeated himself, substituting wenter, and wouch, in the places of the words previously used.

"Dear me! I should become wain o' myself if I thought your compliment was walid," says the milliner, dropping her eyes; but the next moment she gives her bonnet-strings a little flirt, and goes on in the sprightliest way about a hundred trifles, one of which had no connection with another.

"You've forgot what you sot out on!" says John, interrupting her at last; "and you kerried me away so, I was a-forgittin' on 't too. Howsever, it's no odds, as I know on, you make whatever you touch so interestin'!"

"O Captain! how you do warnish me up! I shall certainly wacate the premises when we come to port, if you don't stop sich things! that is, if there's a single westige o' clear sky. But we were talking of the walue of money, was n't we?" She cast down her eyes again, and spoke with a sweet seriousness. "I walue money," she says, "when I see I can make another happy with it." And then she says her lot in life has been a wery lonely and sad one, wersatile, but on the whole lonely, sometimes to the wery werge of despair!

"I

"You don't say?" says John. certainly should n't 'a' thought it possible! Why, you don't mean to say you've allers been alone in the world?"

Then she tells him how she thought she fell in love, at seventeen, with a green-grocer that turned out to be a miserable wagabond, inwesting all her earnings in whiskey and rum, and drinking them himself.

"The villain!" cried John; — and then, finding that he had not done justice to his feelings, he repeated, with great stress of indignation, "The willain the black-hearted willain! But

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