memento of the juvenile engagement which, the reader may monotonous manner, varied occasionally by a trip to the deep not be astonished to learn, had once existed between himself sea fisheries. and Caroline Manning. This souvenir, whether accidentally overlooked in the return of letters at Mr. Manning's desire, or withheld purposely, was evidence unimpeachable of the fact and the character of said connection. It was nothing less than a letter penned in Caroline's own hand, addressed to her boylover, and glowing with all the inconsiderate ardor of a lovelorn maiden in her fifteenth year. This was the effusion which Horace Miller's burning gaze now scanned; its every line branding with the grossest deceit and direct mendacity the being he had worshipped. Galling as its phrases of undisguised tenderness were to his proud, delicate spirit, this was as nothing in comparison with the blighting conviction that his idol was the basest clay-one for whom his pity must be mingled with contempt. "If she had but told me-if she had owned the truth, were it a thousand times more humiliating-I would have loved her all the same," he said to his sister that night; "I told her so when I made inquiry about this girlish folly-for it was only a folly, Ellen-the fanciful dream of a sentimental schoolgirl. The whole sin was in its concealment, in the premeditated deception of him who hid nothing from her. I have not deserved this at her hands." Ellen was much moved, but less surprised than her brother; the scales had not fallen so suddenly from her eyes. Feeling that all might as well be told, that the wisest and most merciful policy towards the sufferer was to complete his disenchantment by abundance of testimony, she related her story. To her, the scene in which Caroline and Mary Chester had acted such different parts, was but the commencement of similar developments, the key to incidents hitherto inexplicable, each illustrative of this heinous defect in the disposition and conduct of the misguided girl. The shad is a member of the family of Clupeidæ, a family which, though not numerous in species, includes a series of fish of the highest importance in an economical point of view. The herring, anchovy, pilchard and sprat belong to it, as does also that favorite of London epicures, the whitebait. All of these fishes have small mouths, and either very small teeth or none at all, and they are therefore but ill adapted to prey on other fishes, and are mostly obliged to find their subsistence in the myriads of minute animals diffused throughout the waters of the ocean, or lurking among the weeds at the bottom. They are all of them eminently migratory in their habits, traversing, at different seasons, the entire ocean, and performing their journeys in immense schools, to which fact one of them, the herring, owes its name, it being derived from the German word heer, signifying army. Cuvier separated the shad from Clupeidae proper from the circumstance of there being a notch or emargination in its upper jaw, not observable in the other branches of the family, and assigned to it the name Alosa. In other respects the generic characters are identical in both. The shad is found in Great Britain and Europe as well as in this country, but is by no means so great a favorite there as here. The English shad is a coarse and insipid fish, but there is a peculiar species caught in Scotland, called the Alice shad, which is much esteemed. The shad is sometimes called in England mother of herrings, and sometimes rock herrings, the first of which names may, perhaps, be intended for mouther of herrings, shad having a disagreeable habit of feeding upon the small individuals of their own class, when crustacea, of which they are most fond, are not readily available. With regard to the young shad, there has been much doubt manifested as to what manner of fish they were, and until the year 1828 it was supposed in England that Yarrel deAnd thus Caroline Manning lost lover and friend, gaining in the whitebait and the young shad were identical. their place a memory replete with wretchedness and shame unmonstrated the incorrectness of this supposition, and decided availing; the blind commiseration of those cognisant of the the whitebait to be an independent species, which it has ever punishment, and not the sin; the displeasure and distrust of since continued to be, to the great satisfaction of certain corporathe few whose esteem she most valued; the lasting reprobations of the city of London, who repair annually to the towns tion of him concerning whom, and in whose behalf she had of Greenwich or Blackwall, on the Thames, to partake of a sacrificed more of truth than for any other cause or creature besides. For was it not to screen their loves from the profanation of vulgar remark, that the lie of policy slipped from her tongue ere she was alive to its formation in thought? Tat she might shine brighter, stand higher in the respect of him and his, was not the tinsel lie of vanity paraded? To spare him a feather's weight of vexation, an atom of added care, had not the lie of affection been earnest and repeated? To his anger, to retain his love, was the lie of fright a whit less plausible and convincing than the rest? Truly, her labors had been neither few nor small, and here was their reward! The fly in the ointment had fulfilled its mission, and the once exult-borhoods, owing to the want of compenetration of the two ing possessor of the precious casket flung it from him with sorrowful loathing. escape Would that this tale were all fiction, or that it treated of the only golden phial thus polluted into a rank offence to those who, in this age of gaudy coloring and intense refraction, still cherish, as one of the holiest of sentiments, a genuine Heaven-commanded love of truth, for itself and as it is! THE SHAD FISHERY. Ar about this season of the year, sometimes a little earlier, a large number of men are actively employed in the shad fishery around the shores of Long and Staten Islands, and up the river as far as Albany. Large numbers of men and youths migrate from the higher waters of the Hudson, and waking from the half torpid state of inactivity in which they have passed the winter, set to work with a zeal and energy worthy of the highest cause. Rough and ready customers are these men, and not perhaps over-refined, but boisterous and jolly on the approach of spring, their harvest-time, the rest of the year being spent in a more whitebait dinner. Little is known of the habits of the had beyond the fact of its periodical migrations to the fresh-water rivers for the purpose of depositing its spawn, in which respect it differs from the herring and pilchard, which spawn on the coast, in salt water, and seldom ascend rivers above the mean line of separation between salt and fresh water. Like the salmon, it lingers some time in brackish water before ascending to the fresh-an important fact in its natural history. It is well known that the water at the mouths of rivers is usually warmer by several degrees, than that of either the river or the sea in those neigh liquids, on account of their different densities. The shad finds it necessary to resort to this warm water for the development of the time of its first appearance in the bay and its arrival at the its spawn, and accordingly several weeks usually elapse between the spawning-place. It is at this time that its flesh is in best order for the table, and it deteriorates rapidly as the roes mature and spawning time approaches. Elian says that the shad have acute organs of hearing, and that they are very susceptible to the sounds of musical instruments, by means of which they may sometimes be attracted to the surface. According to the same writer, they are also affected by thunder, and upon hearing it, while ascending rivers, will turn about and hasten to the depths of the ocean. As we have said, our information on the subject of the shad's peculiarities is meagre, for notwithstanding that by its peculiar organization it is able to live in fresh as well as in salt water, few attempts have been made that we know of to breed it, and the little information we have of its habits is mostly based on the traditions of the fishermen. Persons crossing by the ferry to Jersey City may often have wondered for what possible use are those rows of poles just arising above the surface of the water. These are part of the apparatus of the shad fishermen, and form no inconsiderable item in the expenses of the "boss," costing from three dollars to five dollars each, and sometimes as high as ten dollars has been paid for them. They are of great length, varying from forty to a hundred and twenty feet; the longer ones, which are used for the deep water, are formed of one or two lengths spliced together. The method of setting these poles are as follows: A party of four or five men row out in the stream to the spot selected by them previously, towing after them another boat laden with poles. The principle on which they select a site is that the deeper the water the more fish they will catch. The poles are each carefully lowered endwise to the bottom, and when one end reaches the soft mud at the bottom of the water, a spar is fastened to the pole horizontally at some distance above the water, and upon this the whole boat's crew jump with all their weight, and the huge pole is speedily sunk to the required depth, descending sometimes three feet at a jump. The nets are set against these poles, and when the shad come up with the tide, they are forced against the nets, which are taken up at the flood. This species of net is called the gill net. There are also two other methods of taking the shad, namely, by drift nets and fykes. The drift nets are made with meshes about an inch square, and their dimensions are usually about two hundred and fifty fathoms long by five fathoms deep. They are provided with floats on the one edge and leads on the other. In setting these nets a gang of men row out into the fishing grounds, with the net placed on a wooden way or platform, on the boat. One end of the net is placed in the water, and the boat is then rowed gently across the stream until the whole length of the net is set. This process is one requiring great care and judgment, otherwise the set will be of no avail. When the whole of the net is thus set, a rope is carried from one end of the net to the boat, and by rowing down the stream the net is made to assume a slightly curved form. The fishes now swimming up the bay in the direction of fresh water encounter the net, and before they are aware of its presence run their heads through the meshes and are unable to extricate themselves, the size of their bodies preventing their going forward, and their gills presenting an insurmountable obstacle to their retreat. After drifting in this manner for some time-often as long as seven or eight hours-the net is carefully raised from the water, which is done by first lifting the end to which the rope is attached and then rowing slowly toward the other end, raising the rest of it on the way. As the Det is drawn from the water it is coiled, the fishes still hanging in the meshes, in the large tray in which it was brought from the shore, and by this means it is prevented from becoming tangled and torn. Upon reaching the shore the tray is handed over to the boys, who immediately set to work to disengage the fish, in doing which every fold of the net is examined and every snarl carefully undone. The fykes are a species of tunnel nets, that is of a conical shape, with wings on each side. The shad coming up with the stream go into these tunnels and are unable to return; they are taken out at low water. The fykes are used about Staten Island, the gill nets from the Narrows to Sing Sing, and the drift nets from Sing Sing to Albany. The fish caught in the gill nets are considered the best, those from the drift nets rank next, and those from the fykes are esteemed the least. Large hauls, sometimes amounting to some hundreds are made during the height of the season, but they decrease as the season draws to an end. When the shad grow scarce, when the hauls are smaller, and especially when intelligence is received of the presence of shad up the river, the fishermen leave the bay to try their luck further up the stream, and to codeavor to head off the fish on their way to the spawning grounds, but the shad which are taken higher up the river are io variably smaller than those of the bay. The number of men employed in the shad fishery is estimated to be at least three thousand, irrespective of those on shore, such as commission merchants, retail salesmen and the like. The fishermen work in gangs composed of six men, headed ly a boss. Each gang employs three boats, and in addition to these there are between twenty and thirty decked smacks which convey the fish from the boats to the wharf. A great number are also brought up by the cars and steamboats. On one day in 1858 the number brought to the wharf at the foot of Barclay street was seventy-one thousand, which were then selling at twelve cents, producing an aggregate sum of eight thousand five hundred dollars. FLOWER LEGENDS. AMONG the ancients, the qualities of a tree, the attitude of a flower, the etymology of its name, inspired the lively imagination of the men of old with a fable, or embellishments of a simple history, which received from them a kind of pleasant acceptance, a willing credence. All the poets who sing well of flowers have secured a good hearing; the very names of plants "smell sweet and blossom in the dust" of old literature and in almost forgotten songs. The Persians press their sentiments into the mouths of flowers, and arrange their bouquets grammatically. In all civilized nations they are the types and symbols of loveliness, innocence and freshness, of unquestioned and unquestioning beauty. When Venus first appeared rising from the froth of the sea, roses were said to have sprung simultaneously from the earth, and the graces hastening to attend her, crowned themselves with the novel flower, in honor of the new divinity. The roses which then appeared were white; and none displayed any other tint till the death of Adonis, when Venus hastening barefooted to the assistance of her beloved, trod upon a rose which wounded her with its thorns, and being stained with her blood, ever after retained the crimson hue. Associated with the Narcissus, we have the following: Narcissus was a youth of Boeotia, of whom Tiresias, the soothsayer, foretold that he should live happily until he saw his own face, but that would be fatal to him. On account of his surpassing beauty, the nymph Echo become desperately enamored of him, but he slighted her love, and she pined away with grief till nothing remained of her but her voice, and even that lost the power of utterance beyond repeating the last syllable of a sentence. Narcissus, heated by the chace, went to drink from a clear calm rivulet, and there, for the first time, beheld his He became so fond of himown image reflected in the water. self, that he would never leave the spot where his beauty had been revealed to him, but gazing till he had wasted away, was changed by the gods into the flower that bears his name. Hyacinthus, being beautiful and accomplished, was so highly esteemed by Apollo, that Zephyrus, incensed at the youth's coldness and indifference, determined on his destruction. One day, when Apollo and Hyacinthus were playing quoits, Zephyrus, hidden among the fleecy clouds, directed with his breath the quoit flung by Apollo full upon the head of the unfortunate prince, who instantly fell dead. Great was the grief of the sungod, who, to commemorate his victim by their grace and beauty, caused hyacinths to spring from his blood. In connection with flowers comes in the lovely legend of the Rape of Proserpine; who, on the Nysian plain, accompanied by the ocean nymphs, was plucking flowers; she culled the rose, the violet, the crocus, the hyacinth; and beholding a narcissus of rare size and beauty, she stretched out her hand to gather it, when the earth opened, and Pluto arising in his golden chariot, seized her and bore her away. Ceres, her mother, hears her cries, but knows not who has stolen her, nor whither she has fled. Helios, however (the sun), betrays the secret, and tells her that Jove permitted it. "Then Ceres, disgusted, deserted heaven and dwelt among mortals." But she would not allow the corn to sprout, and threatened with the destruction of his subjects on earth, Jove beseeches her to return to heaven, to which she consents on one condition-the restoration of her daughter, who at length returns, but not till she has eaten a pomegrante given her by Pluto; through which she was compelled to return and pass a third of the year with her infernal husband; for Pluto dwelt in Hades." And what is Proserpine but seed corn, which being cast into the ground, remains there till it appears upon the surface, and though not delaying to sprout for a third of a year, yet it is about that time from the sowing of the grain to its ripened fulness of the ear. Turning to the Christian era, we find that the priests of the early church enlisted flowers into their service. They compiled a catalogue of flowers for each day, dedicating each to some particular saint on account of its flowering about the time of the saint's festival. Every one knows the aspen, ever moving, ever trembling in the calmest summer day, the legend of which runs as follows: As the angel of death neared the cross on which He hung who "considereth the lilies how they grow," he dashed the cup of bitterness full at its foot; and the aspen that grew near, for out of one of them the cross was made, shuddering at the daring of the deed, inherited for ever the trembling throes of the dying Deity. The Shamrock, the national emblem of one of Britain's fairest isles, has its Christian legend thus: St. Patricius, unable to make his hearers comprehend the meaning of the word Trinity, despairingly cast his eyes on the ground in prayer for some means whereby he might "lighten the Gentiles," when spying the little trefoil-shamrock at his feet, he plucked it, and holdit up on high, pointed to three leaves on one stem as the emblem of his doctrine, to the easy comprehension of his listeners. To that beautiful little flower the Forget-me-not, with its blue, like the tint of a summer sky, and its golden eye, bright as hope, is attached a legend known to most of our readers, though it will not be amiss to repeat it. A German knight, with his lady-love, were walking on the banks of the Danube, when the fair one saw the tuft of the myosotis in the stream, and expressed her wish for it. With all chivalrous alacrity, the knight in full array, plunged in and gathered the prize; but the eddies of that treacherous river drew him down in their fatal grasp; and sinking, he threw the flowers on shore to his distracted mistress, with the well-known words, "Vergiss mein nicht!" Forget-me-not." The Yew-tree, still to be met in many an English churchyard, was not only planted there as a type of immortality, but that the proper wood for bows, when archery was at its height and firearms unknown, might be preserved from the ruthless hand of the woodman, and cut only at certain times, and by those appointed for that purpose. Our ancestors, even two centuries ago, evinced by the names they gave to many plants the high estimation in which they held them; such as rosemary, majoram (margery), basil, &c., and the botanical names still in use show the healing properties ascribed to each-properties which have for the most part been lost sight of, though the European peasant preserves traditionally the uses and application of some to the present day. The sight of some particular flower will often recall early associations, and it is not many years since that, on the introduction of a single root of the "pale" primrose into the most flourishing of the British colonies by an emigrant, so great a crowd assembled to catch a glimpse of that dear-remembered flower, that a body of police had to guard it on its passage from the ship. What memories of the past, what recollections of shady lanes and spring flowers plucked in early youth, to be given to loved ones long since passed away, must have been AN ORIENTAL PROCESSION. BARBARIC splendor is associated with the East, and there can be High on a throne of gorgeous state, which far Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, while Shakespeare in his description of Cleopatra, in her burnished barge as it proceeded in imperial state down the Nile, has excelled every poet in describing Fastern splendor. In nothing do the East so much excel as in their processions, a faint idea of which may occasionally be caught by the glittering imitation of a grand spectacle at a first-class theatre; but, of course, the natural exhilaration of sunlight, almost bewildering in its brightness, and the splendid azure of the sky, with the heightened nature all around is wanting, and only a faint notion can be got of that wealth of cumbrous grandeur which oppresses instead of satisfies the mind. of the East are astonished at the commonplace bareness of the grandest of European processions. Dwarganath Tagore observed to an English friend during his stay in England, that the only thing he saw in London at all worthy of being looked at was the Lord Mayor's show-a mountebank procession, in which there is an amusing mixture of incongruous ages. It would thus seem as though the feudal and the Eastern had sympathies in common. That this is the effect of education we all know, since natives On page 512 we give a picture of an Eastern Indian prince riding through one of his cities; and it requires little imagination to realize how widely civilized man differs, not only in his moralities, but in his surroundings. That the latter moulds the former is the lesson taught by all experience, and accounts for the comparative ease with which the men of Northern latitudes overthrow those of the Southern and Eastern-indeed, of all sultry climes. The indolence of the Oriental has passed into a proverb, as well as his magnificence, and will doubtless remain so to the end of time. An English poet says The Eastern satrap rides along, That nature shall be Paradise: THERE was a beautiful instance of fine horsemanship displayed at a late review at Vienna, upon the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the military order of the Maria Theresa, when some thirty thousand cavalry were in line. A called up at the sight of that modest flower in a foreign land! little child in the front row of the spectators, becoming frightInnocent as flower-legends are, they are fast passing away be-ened, rushed forward just as a squadron of hussars were chargfore the so-called "march of civilization." All the good old "legendary lore" is becoming like the mistletoe of the Druids oak, almost lost. They are flown, Beautiful fictions of our fathers; wove In superst tion's web, when time was young, And fondly love and cherished; they are flown Before the wand of science. CHARITY IN JUDGMENT.-Never let it be forgotten that there is scarcely a single moral action of a single human being of which other men have such a knowledge-its ultimate grounds, its surrounding incidents, and the real determining causes of its merits as to warrant their pronouncing a conclusive judg ment. ing at full tilt-swooping down with maddening velocity, nay, almost on the child. Terror paralyzed alike the spectators and the mother of the child, while the lovely and amiable Empress almost fainted with horror, for the child's destruction seemed inevitable. The little one was almost under the horse's feetanother instant would have sealed its doom-wheu a bussar, without lessening his speed or loosening his hold, threw himself along his horse's neck, and seizing the child placed it in safety, in front of his saddle, without so much as changing the pace or breaking the alignment in the least. A hundred thousand voices hailed with pride and joy the deed, while two voices could but sob their gratitude; the one a mother's, the other that of her sympathizing and beloved Empress. A proud moment that must have been for the hussar when his Emperor, taking the enamelled cross of merit, attached it to his breast-a proud moment alike for the sovereign and the man. |