full of ease and pleasure, talking around her everywhere; but her heart lay as if a great stone had fallen on it. Her baby raised himself up against her, and stroked her cheeks with his little hands; and, springing up and down, crowing and chatting, seemed determined to arouse her. She strained him suddenly and tightly in her arms, and slowly one tear after another fell on his wondering, unconscious face; and gradually she seemed, but little by little, to grow calmer, and busied herself with tending and nursing him."

The wretched mother lays her babe down to sleep, and a devil in human form steals that, too, from her:

"Lucy,' said the trader, 'your child's gone; you may as well know it first as last. You see, I know'd you couldn't take him down south; and I got a chance to sell him to a firstrate family, that 'll raise him better than you can.'

The shot had passed too

66 But the woman did not scream. straight and direct through her heart for a cry or tear. Dizzily she sat down. Her slack hands fell lifeless by her side. Her eyes looked straight forward, but she saw nothing. All the noise and hum of the boat, the groaning of the machinery, mingled dreamily to her bewildered ear; and the poor, dumbstricken heart had neither cry nor tear to show for its utter misery. She was quite calm."

But the following paragraphs are the finest in this tragical episode; indeed, it is as touching a description as we ever saw. Note how the beauty of the

night, its mysterious solemnity, and the agony of the one poor heart are commingled:

"Night came on-night, calm, unmoved, and glorious, shining down with her innumerable and solemn angel eyes, twinkling, beautiful, but silent. There was no speech nor language, no pitying voice nor helping hand, from that distant sky. One after another the voices of business or pleasure died away; all on the boat were sleeping, and the ripples at the prow were plainly heard. Tom stretched himself out on a box, and there, as he lay, he heard, ever and anon, a smothered sob or cry from the prostrate creature-'O! what shall I do! O Lord! O good Lord, do help me!' and so, ever and anon, until the murmur died away in silence.

"At midnight Tom waked with a sudden start. Something black passed quickly by him to the side of the boat, and he heard a splash in the water. No one else saw or heard anything. He raised his head-the woman's place was vacant! He got up, and sought about him in vain. The poor bleeding heart was still at last, and the river rippled and dimpled just as brightly as if it had not closed above it."

We must quote also the inimitable description of

"LITTLE EVA."

Her form was the perfection of childish beauty, without its usual chubbiness and squareness of outline. There was about it an undulating and aerial grace, such as one might dream of for some mythic and allegorical being. Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty of feature than for a singular and

dreamy earnestness of expression, which made the ideal start when they looked at her, and by which the dullest and most illiteral were impressed, without exactly knowing why. The shape of her head and the turn of her neck and bust were particularly noble, and the long golden-brown hair that floated like a cloud around it, the deep, spiritual gravity of her violetblue eyes, shaded by heavy fringes of golden brown-all marked her out from other children, and made every one turn to look after her, as she glided hither and thither on the boat. Nevertheless, the little one was not what you would have called either a grave child or a sad one. On the contrary, an airy and innocent playfulness seemed to flicker like the shadow of summer leaves over her childish face, and around her buoyant figure. She was always in motion, always with a half smile on her rosy mouth, flying hither and thither, with an undulating and cloud-like tread, singing to herself as she moved, as in a happy dream. Her father and female guardian were incessantly busy in pursuit of her, but when caught, she melted from them again like a summer cloud; and as no word of chiding or reproof ever fell on her ear for whatever she chose to do, she pursued her own way all over the boat. Always dressed in white, she seemed to move like a shadow through all sorts of places, without contracting spot or stain; and there was not a corner or nook, above or below, where those fairy footsteps had not glided, and that visionary golden head, with its deep blue eyes, fleeted along.

The fireman, as he looked up from his sweaty toil, sometimes found those eyes looking wonderingly into the raging depths of the furnace, and fearfully and pityingly at him, as

if she thought him in some dreadful danger. Anon the steersman at the wheel paused and smiled, as the picture-like head gleamed through the window of the round-house, and in a moment was gone again. A thousand times a day rough voices blessed her, and smiles of unwonted softness stole over hard faces as she passed; and when she tripped fearlessly over dangerous places, rough, sooty hands were stretched involuntarily out to save her and smooth her path.

Here is something entirely different, and yet executed with wonderful skill, as any one can attest who has lived in New England. It is a picture of

"A NEW ENGLAND FARM-HOUSE.”

Whoever has traveled in the New England states will remember, in some cool village, the large farm-house, with its clean-swept, grassy yard, shaded by the dense and massive foliage of the sugar-maple; and remember the air of order and stillness, of perpetuity and unchanging repose, that seemed to breath over the whole place. Nothing lost, or out of order; not a picket loose in the fence, not a particle of litter in the turfy yard, with its clumps of lilac bushes growing up under the windows. Within he will remember wide, clean rooms, where nothing ever seems to be doing or going to be done, where everything is once and forever rigidly in place, and where all household arrangements move with the punctual exactness of the old clock in the corner. In the family "keepingroom," as it is termed, he will remember the staid, respectable old book-case, with its glass doors, where Rollin's History, Mil

ton's Paradise Lost, Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, and Scott's Family Bible, stand side by side in decorous order, with multitudes of other books, equally solemn and respectable. There are no servants in the house, but the lady in the snowy cap, with the spectacles, who sets sewing every afternoon among her daughters, as if nothing ever had been done, or were to be done -she and her girls, in some long-forgotten fore part of the day, "did up the work," and for the rest of the time, probably, at all hours when you would see them, it is "done up." The old kitchen floor never seems stained or spotted; the tables, the chairs, and the various cooking utensils, never seem deranged or disordered; though three and sometimes four meals a day are got there, though the family washing and ironing is there performed, and though pounds of butter and cheese are in some silent and mysterious manner there brought into existence.

And here is something very, very beautiful. The gentle Eva is passing calmly and quietly to her home in heaven:

"St. Clare smiled. You must excuse him, he could n't help it-for St. Clare could smile yet. For so bright and placid was the farewell voyage of the little spirit-by such sweet and fragrant breezes was the small bark borne toward the heavenly shores, that it was impossible to realize that it was death that was approaching. The child felt no pain-only a tranquil, soft weakness, daily and almost insensibly increasing; and she was so beautiful, so loving, so trustful, so happy, that one could not resist the soothing influence of that air of innocence and peace which seemed to breathe around her. St. Clare found a strange