gradually depress or elevate any particular race or class of men, know that there is nothing in either the history or the present condition of the African race to preclude the idea, that in the great future it may possibly (though not probably) attain an equal rank in all respects with the fore

most of the other races.

But the fullest admission of such facts and possibilities as these does not affect the truth of the declaration, that at least during the present generation the attempt to mix the white and colored races in the schools of fifteen States of this Union, is not only as impossible as to equalize socially the Brahmins and Pariahs of Hindoostan, but, if forcibly pressed, would defeat the general education of both races.

The true policy in this matter is to cul

tivate with the negroes the pride of race; to teach them that no promotion is real, which does not come from merit and achievements, and that while the contention for equality of rights is ennobling, every form of social presumption is contemptible and debasing. The history of the Jewish people from the beginning. until now illustrates the peculiar power of race-segregation, and also its harmlessness. And the peculiarities of the negro mind and character fit the race for a special development of rare interest. Is it too much to hope that profound thinkers may yet rebuke the vulgar spirit of miscegenation in all its forms, and evolve a scheme for preserving and improving the separate races of man in their purity?

THE sun was setting behind the little port, and all the softened splendor of his rays was diffusing in a rosy gush across the sea whose great waves weltered lazily in that August night, their ruby masses breaking in lines of silver on the beach. Just vanishing in the purple bank of the horizon some sails had caught the warm flush and were glowing in it a moment ere they turned to the shadow; and a full moon was slowly swinging up the rim of her shield of silver in the east, to complete the calm brilliance of the scene.

But the group that clustered at a window looking out upon this view, was not much in accordance with its sweet and tranquil spell,—a group full of the small rancors and acrimonies of earth, except for young Tom, into whose nature had been strained something sweeter than was to be found in the ordinary Waite blood.

"A silly simpleton!" said Sister Waite, snapping her knitting-needles till they might have struck sparks, while she talked over young Tom's strange news. "And that's what she is!"

"A consumed old fool," said Mr. Waite, as if his language were a corrective to his wife's weaker English.

"And there's no fool like an old fool, as I've often heard you say," simpered Miss Amelia, while she looked down the shore

and twisted her long false curl into which that morning she had, by a singular inversion of the fashion, artistically sewed some gray hairs plucked from her own head. "I declare," she cried, "I declare it makes me sick!" And there was so much of the green and yellow in Miss Amelia's face that nobody would have doubted her.

"Poor thing! Poor thing!" cried old Abby Morse. "Her wits have been woolgathering ever since Earl Warwick went away, I guess. I'll never forget that day she fainted in the choir when he came home from the wreck-such a slit as I made in my challis, and you know how that tears, criss-cross and quatery cornered like a blind man's walk! There's no such pretty goods to be had now. But there,

just fancy it,—at her time of life! It's a sleeveless errand, a sleeveless errand, poor thing!" And she shook her head, as though she looked down a woful perspective.

"Well," said Mrs. Waite, emphatically, "I wash my hands of her, and she'll sup sorrow, if ever any one did. It's nothing but her money, and you needn't say a word, Tom! Land sakes!-there they come! I shall give up! Just look at her face! Oh it's all John Anderson, my Jo, John. Married last night-well, I hope she wont repent it!" concluded Mrs. Waite

in a tone that plainly meant she hoped she would.

"But for my part," cried Tom, winding up his narration, "for my part, I think it's beautiful!"

And what did Achsa care? The idle wind that blew about her soft thin hair was more to her now than any breath of theirs-unless it might be young Tom's. Forty years ago, perhaps-ah, forty years ago! Things had been very different with her then; she had been young and strong and gay; pretty, maybe, with the round rosiness of youth, dark braids just shading into black, and great gray eyes, and velvety lips that parted over little pearls of teeth-she had them yet, those pearly teeth; but as she looked in the glass it was not with a smile, and so she seldom saw them. Seldom, indeed, she looked in the glass at all, since she saw there now no vestige that was pleasant to her of the sweet young face whose wistful eyes gazed after Earl Warwick as he hastened down the lane that night, with all the apple-blossoms shaking off about him-that night he went to sea.

A time when Achsa had not loved Earl Warwick was a time she could not remember. They had kissed across the picketfence the first day each had seen the little laughing face of the other peering above it; they had played together in the gardenbeds, gone berrying in the fields and wading in the surf; she had divided her luncheon with him at school, and prompted him in his classes, and he had brought her May-flowers in the spring, and bulrushes in the summer, and nuts in the fall, and had dragged her up-hill on his sled in winter. And then they had gone to singing-school; and of course Earl came home with Achsa, for they lived almost nextdoor to each other; and at length they sung side by side in the choir together, and their voices blended, her sweet treble and his golden tenor, like two sunbeams into one; and the people of the port who saw them fishing down in Melvyn's Channel, their boat rocking at anchor, used to look after them with good natured smiles and pleasant prophesies of what had not yet begun to trouble them. Thus in all that early time when the impressions are the strongest and take deepest hold on vitality, Earl Warwick was a part of Achsa's life. But in all their childish plays a wild element had mingled, they were on rafts, in cyclones, on desert islands, exploring

the poles, fighting pirates; and what it meant appeared to Achsa as they came home from choir-meeting, one Saturday night, and Earl told her he was going to sea.

"To sea?" she cried. For she understood on all sides that his father had laid out a different path in life for Earl.

"To sea," said Earl. "Haven't I always told you I wanted to ?"

"Oh, yes, indeed; but I thought you couldn't. I thought

"Why, what am I staying here for?" exclaimed Earl. "Father may hate it, if he will

"He says he had enough of it."

"Well, perhaps I may hate it, too, when I have had enough of it. Enough of it! I can never have enough of it!" he cried, breathlessly. "I see the great, rosy thing rolling in in the morning; I see it all gray and silver at night. Its voice is always in my ears. I long to rise and fall on those swells far out from land, as all my race have done before me; to see nothing but its stretch-to hear nothing but its wash." "Yes, you ought to go to sea, Earl," said Achsa, sadly, looking down.

"Well, then, I've got to run away." "Run away!"

"Yes, run away. For father 'll never listen to a word I say about it. He's set upon my going into trade and marrying Mr. Jerson's daughter, and being a rich

man

"And you?"

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"I'm set upon the sea! I'm set upon the sea!" he cried. 'I'm going to see the world-the round world; to have other stars over me at midnight!"

"Yes, it would be beautiful to do." "But I'm coming back to you!" he said, turning and looking at her. turning and looking at her. "I'm coming back to you, for there's no one like you! You are so sweet, so good! And, Achsawhen I'm ashoreAnd then he left a

kiss upon those velvet lips, a different kiss from any ever laid on them before-annother and another. And Achsa, all blushing in a warm, sweet wave of bliss, willing he should take the sea for his profession, -as she would have been to give him the moon, had he cried for it and she been able to pluck it from the skies,—was watching him out of sight.

When Earl ran up the little garden-path two nights afterwards, and cried, not exactly as Ulysses did :

"There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail There gloom the dark, broad seas;"

but words of similar effect: "Good-bye, my little girl! I'm off; the Bonnibel is slipping her cable now, wind and tide in her favor, and I'll be outward bound for Singapore to-night!" Then Achsa shook from head to foot, and everything swam before her, and she was conscious only of his arms about her, and that he was calling her dear, tender names, and that he had gone at last, and left his ring on her finger. All night she knelt at the window of her room in the roof, watching the ghostly shimmer of the sail that softly swept across the purple darkness of the waters, and down the far horizon's rim, praying Heaven to fill it with prospering gales, to keep her darling well, to bring him safely backher darling, so handsome, so daring, so noble, so kind! And she was as white as the sail that she had watched, when she came down in the morning.

But when Mr. Warwick, who, as it chanced at that time, kept the village post-office, found that Achsa had known of Earl's going, he came out of his way, one day, to accost her as she walked along the grassy sidewalk; for, though he had always known of Earl's fondness for her, he had thought it prudent, having other plans for him, to take no notice of it, but to wait till it should blow over. Now he towered above her, swinging his cane, till it seemed to her that he was lifting his heavy hand threateningly, as he declared that none of her airs and graces should entrap one who was meant for her betters, with such an oath that the little, quivering creature took to her heels without a word of reply, and scampered home, where she threw her arms about her mother's neck, and sobbed out the whole story of how Mr. Warwick had insulted her, and how she believed she was engaged to Earl, and how she didn't know! And her mother | comforted her, and told her father; and her father, who was one of the hapless sort that needs to rely on others, went and told his Daughter Waite; and Daughter Waite, who had felt it incumbent on her, for some half dozen years, to say what Achsa should have to wear, and how she should behave in it, and had kept as good watch over her as she had been able through her rather distant windows, and had rather approved than otherwise of her intimacy with Earl Warwick, said to him that certainly he was right, and, of course, it was no lookout at all for Achsa if Earl was going to follow the sea, and they had been badly used in

having the expectation kept concealed from them; and, for her part, she had always been led to suppose that he was going into trade, and that Achsa would have her own horse and chaise to ride in; and now she supposed they'd see the advantage of consulting her a little earlier next time! And the poor man found himself at his wits' ends presently, between his desire to make his pretty little Achsa happy, and his fear of his Daughter Waite's sharp tongue-a tongue that was the more effective because he had sometimes been obliged to have recourse to her open hand. And all that he knew how to do now was to use his best exertions to divert Achsa's thoughts from herself, and thus from Earl.

But the mother was less world-wise than the other two; and she and Achsa puzzled over the ship-news together, and when they happened to come across the name of a vessel that had spoken the Bonnibel, they cut out the item, and pinned it on Achsa's wall beside her looking-glass; and Achsa used to read it there morning and night,— it kept Earl alive for her, and she chose the spot beneath it to kneel and say her prayers on, as if it were before a shrine, with a heart as white and innocent as any devotee's. And Achsa and her mother used to talk about Earl, alone by themselves, and fix him on imaginary meridians; now he had touched at St. Helena; now he was weathering the Cape; now he was among the Lascars and in Hindoo temples; now he was on his homeward track; now the pleasant winds and fair weather might bring him when they least expected it.

Certainly it was cruel that just at this time, just when the Bonnibel was nearly due, Aunt Goodenough, an uncle's widow, who had lately been at Mrs. Waite's, and who had taken a great fancy to poor Achsa, should have sent for the child to make her a visit. Achsa more than suspected that it must be at her elder sister's instance, and though at any other time the journey would have been delightful, now she feared there was mischief in it-the more, indeed, when she found that her father had talked of selling his big silver watch to raise the ready money requisite, and Sister Waite had supplied it from her own purse-a purse that always had the "devil's penny" in it.

"Achsa's too pretty, mother, to throw away," said the father, as he discussed the matter with his wife in the watches of the night, winning, perhaps, the mother's

reason, but, by no means, her heart. "She can do better with herself. And, as Daughter Waite says, she needn't go into any family that wants to bar her out."

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Daughter Waite says anything but her prayers!" rejoined the mother, who was rather tired, she sometimes said, of singing second to Daughter Waite.

But the mother wholly pleased with the arrangement or not, the lumbering old stage coach, one day, took up Achsa and her father and a kit of mackerel, and left them at Aunt Goodenough's farm. And for a day and a night Achsa was in an ecstasy-an ecstasy over the dairy, over the great barn, over the comical fowls, over the large-eyed oxen; the fields were full of the new-mown hay; the roses were red under every old stone wall; the honeysuckles made simple breathing rapture; in the night she heard a golden robin open his throat with a sigh of such song as his first parents sang in Eden; and while it was still night she heard all the dark break up in music, and usher in the blushing day. She thought that life here with Earl would be Eden over again.

Achsa, of course, had not supposed it was intended she should stay after her father left, and suddenly all her pleasure in the place turned, as flowers turn in a black frost, and she was faint with an unknown fear, when, without any other warning, some one called out that the coach had come, and her father kissed her good-bye, and climbed to his seat and was off, all in less than two minutes. But she stifled her feeling; and perhaps an angry recognition of Sister Waite's hand in the business, and as angry a determination to get the better of her yet, assisted Achsa. She thought that, after all, she could safely linger a week or two, and brighten the solitude of which her Aunt Goodenough complained so much —and, on the whole, it would be all the pleasanter if there should be but little time to wait at home before the Bonnibel came in.

with no young face to cheer it, and said that Achsa always put her in mind of her own Achsa who died not long ago, at just her age, and that in only looking at her she seemed to have her child again; and so she urged her in such sorrowful wise to stay, that Achsa's little heart, though bursting with impatience, was not hard enough to refuse her.

Nor was Aunt Goodenough playing a treacherous part, at least to her own conception of it; she did love the child, and wanted to take her for her own; and she thought if she could safely tide her over this affair, as her father had expressed it, it would be better for her in the end,-far better for her to be the heir of that rich farm than the wife of any roving. sailor, with other wives in other ports, as her inland fancy painted it.

Nevertheless, though lingering yet, when one week had ended, and another had begun, and by and by a month had gone, Achsa felt sure the Bonnibel might any day arrive, and she burned with eagerness to be gone, though her kindness and her shamefacedness held her fast. These green meadows about Aunt Goodenough's farm had lost their novelty and had grown hateful to her too; she was thirsty with desire for the bright reaches of the sea with their morning and evening enamels of blue and rose and beryl, with their vast cool twilights and lofty stars, with their foamy fringes, their fresh winds, their music, their tumult, she dreamed constantly of seeing one sail grow into being on the horizon, as a breath might become a cloud, and a cloud a living shape; she longed to be at home with her father's spy-glass, sweeping all the shining field below it, and giving her view, heart-leaping view, when he was yet a mile away, of Earl Warwick, standing in the shrouds and looking as eagerly to shore.

ing, for Daughter Waite made such a pother, the mother said, that least said was soonest mended, when she had a fish in the net! Doubtless Earl had written then, doubtless he had written now, and doubtless the postmaster of the little port had made a prize of all such writing. Still the matter could not rest here, the Bonnibel was in, it seemed; when would she put out to sea again? Achsa was a timid little soul, and had never spoken the first word to another in all her days; but here were life and death in the balance, or as good as life and death to her. She plucked up courage, and with the signal of her fright flying on her cheeks, she asked the person speaking if he knew how long it was before the Bonnibel sailed. "To-morrow or the next day, my pretty maid," said he; and she thanked him mechanically and went out in a complete daze.

"To-morrow, or next day," she kept repeating, as she walked along. To-morrow, or next day." And she went loiteringly, thinking the matter over, trying to ravel it by the right threads, and arriving by slow degrees at comprehension of the fact that she had been sequestered here that she might not meet with Earl while he was on shore, and might have time to outgrow her fancy-as if she could outgrow her own identity! As she thought of it, though her sense of wrong centered on her Sister Waite, the edges of the cloud for a little while overshadowed all those at home whom Sister Waite had found it so easy to persuade; but she could not bring herself to believe that her simple and honest Aunt Goodenough had understood the thing. And now it rushed over her, making her heart stand still, that unless she could get home before the ship sailed, she should not see Earl at all! And what would he think of her! It would almost break his heart! He could not know that she was the poor little victim of a well-meaning conspiracy, that she had been ignorant of the Bonnibel's return. He would only know that she was off taking her pleasure elsewhere at the only time when she could have seen him, answering none of his letters, writing none. If he had not been made to suppose that, he would have found her out; he would have come all the way to see her; nothing but anger with her could have kept him away,

even see her, and shook off her hand on his arm as if it were a raindrop. Oh, yes, she must see him now; she must be there to explain it to him! She would! Why, what if he should sail away again, still angry with her? It was of no consequence that they had lost all the happiness of the little while he was on shore, if only her absence could be explained, and they did. not lose all other happiness. She would not wait a day; he was her own, the darling of her soul, her other self; he never should think she had been false, he should not be sent away to suffer doubts and tortures, and how could she endure another year without the sight of his dear face!

She went to her Aunt Goodenough without delay, and confessed to her the whole. matter in broken sentences, starting up and turning away, and wringing her hands as she came back.

"You must give me the money to go home, aunt !" she cried. "I can't, I can't do without seeing him! And when he is gone I will come again, and work it out, if you want me to."

"Oh, my dear, I don't dare!" was the response. "I'd like to! Yes, I'd like to. But I never should hear the last of it from your Sister Waite. And your father said, Achsa, your Sister Waite said, they were keeping you out of harm's way. They never told me all this,-how was I to know it had gone on ever since you were babies? And I thought they knew best”

"How can it be harm's way, you see, when Earl and I have loved each other all our lives?" she gasped. "Oh, don't let Sister Waite have her way; don't let her stand between me and the only happiness. there is!"

Aunt Goodenough began to cry. "I shall tell your father it was a great mistake," she said, as if, so far as that would help Achsa, she was quite welcome. “And I shall tell your Sister Waite what I think of her-a meddlesome, domineeringbut there! I passed my word, Achsa, I passed my word." Achsa's sobs were the only sound in the little room. "I'll tell you what," said the relenting Aunt Goodenough, "I can't give you the money, on account of my promise, you see; but I'll tell you where I keep my money, and if you choose to go and take a gold piece, why, I sha'n't sue you for a thief! Only