COULD I never tell why, but I arose that morning repeating Coleridge's translation of Schiller's "Hymn to Bacchus"

"Never, believe me, Appear the immortals, Never alone," &c.

I had not been dining out. I had refused Horatio Tidd's invitation to step round to the club, and take it hot with sugar, which was Tidd's practice. I had returned home at the moral hour of eleven, and, after composing myself with the "North American" (the best of sedatives), had slipped quietly into the sheets; and that was the end of me until seven, A. M.

At that hour I awoke, with my eyes turned towards the ceiling, and instantly began to repeat the lines I have quoted.

Come, Cranberry," said I to myself, "this is a little absurd for you, who have to go down town and arrange the means of getting a dinner, to lie here in bed and babble heathenish hymns, as if life were only a luxurious nap. I advise you to get up."

"Certainly," replied I to myself, "if you think best. So here goes.'

And I sprang up, and sat a moment upon the edge of the bed. Yet instantly I began again

1

"Never, believe me,"

and away I went, half-musing, half-muttering, until I felt a little chilly about the ankles.

"Well," said I, laughing to myself, "I agree with you; this is about the most silly business I have been lately engaged in."

And I began to strop my razor. (That reminds me of my bon-mot, generally known as the Cranberry-joke. Once dining with a select party, and being asked how I secured such a kid-glove quality to my chin every morning, I answered, "I steel it." Upon which there was a subdued smile all round the table; and old Stryng Beenz, wishing, after his Dutch fashion, to compliment my good looks, cried out, "Then Cranberry steals the best part of himself every day." At which, as no one clearly understood it, every body loudly laughed.)

To return. I placed myself before my shaving-glass, and began to "steel" my chin. But in the midst, as I stood there, holding my nose awry, with my chin halfraised and saturated in lather, out came the words again, like a torrent, and I said confidentially to myself, in the glass"1 "Never, believe me,

and cut my chin for my pains.

Now, I am a reasonable man, I believe. Andrew Cranberry, Attorney-at-Law, is not held to be superstitious; but there was something peculiar in this constant recurrence of my mind to a poem that I had not read for years.

"What does it portend?" inquired I, as I wiped my face with a damp towel, and walked meditatively towards the shower-bath.

"Does it mean," thought I, interrogatively, as I took the string in my hand, "that I shall ever feel gay enough to sing hymns to the jolly god? Or is it a sort of devil's taunt that I must drink only a Barmecide cup, and content myself with

cold water ?"

Splash! came the shower as I spoke. I had inadvertently pulled the cord.

But the water did not wash away the subject of my thoughts. The sun shone brightly through the muslin curtains of my windows. I felt, without seeing, the beauty of the day. I knew that the life of Babylon was already coursing along its veins those stony veins called streets. I knew that men had been hard at work since sunrise- since daybreak - toiling heavily at labor that should not end until their lives ended; confined in close and noisome places, in which the day was never very bright, and their hopes grew daily darker. I knew that in the green parks and gardens-under the trees and upon the margin of fountains-children in bright dresses were playing in the sun, shouting, singing, and frolicking. I knew that the endless miles of monotonous red brick wall which makes the exterior of city houses, inclosed every kind and degree of joy and sorrow; that the street door saw gay equipages, and smiling and perfumed fashion, and an air of festal content as if Babylon were Paradise-while the chamber-door witnessed bitter envies, and cold bickerings, and loveless lives.

All these images came to my mind as I slowly dressed myself, and I half shuddered to feel that I was one of them; that the inevitable course of events went on; that the stream of life, an aggregate of infinite drops-mine as large as any-flowed steadily forward; and that no power, no prayer, no despair could arrest it.

Heigho!" said I to myself, "what does all this mean? Andrew Cranberry, what the deuce ails you? Mark my word, young man, this means something."

And I shook my finger solemnly, for my own edification; rubbed the ox-marrow upon my hair (I am a little particu

lar) with peculiar unction, as if to say, "Andrew! hold hard, keep dark."

Finally, after stepping to the glass, and solemnly winking at myself, to secure a perfect understanding, I went down with an air of quiet determination, to breakfast.

I may as well confess it now and here, I lived in a boarding-house.

Boarding-houses rose with the fall. They came in with the going out from Paradise. I honor the austere Dante, and I sympathize with him that, in the departments of his Inferno, he omitted the boarding-house. "It is enough," he seems to say; "I have painted terrors enough to warn you to the right. Should I announce the possibility of an eternity of boarding-house, human effort would be paralyzed."

Fancy it, my dear second cousin Lucy Arrowroot, invalid widow of Nee Britchiz, ancient book-keeper-you who live, or whose days are wasted in that dingy square room, with four rusty black hair cloth chairs, with the seedy carpet, with the angular bedstead, the square washstand, the square bureau with the square portrait over it upon the dingy wall. You, pale Lucy, once the rosiest of village girls, arch coquette-whose ringing laugh now hushed makes that country silence sad (one day I shall tell your story), you who lived in the sunshine like a flower, and whom now only rarely and by stealth, creeping between chimneys and along dark walls, a sunbeam visits-will you please fancy how you would shrivel up with terror-like a bird before a snake -at the very idea of an eternity of boarding-house.

I mean, of course, no reflection upon Lucy's landlady, estimable Mrs. Frizzle Front-one of whose dismal back rooms I occupied until a prolonged fit of depression of spirits seriously alarmed my physician for my sanity-and whom I therefore know very well. It is the nature of boarding-houses to be dismal, and the landlady cannot help it.

But then, again, why have landladies such a tendency to be elderly widows in unmitigated mourning- or attenuated spinsters of a serious turn? In my darker and more misanthropic moments, I have audaciously fancied them revenging themselves upon the world by keeping a few persons endurably miserable for a regular sum per week.

When young Moelle de Boeuf- that sprightly Parisian-came to Babylon, he said to me (having brought letters from my old tutor, the Rev. Agnus Peewee who was then in Paris, "studying man, as he expressed it), "Now, mon ami, I wish to find 'apartments.'

I trembled, for I knew very well, from Peewee's letters, what "apartments" mean in Paris-a nice, snug, quiet, airy, handsome suite of rooms, with a ditto, ditto. ditto little chambermaid, called femme-dechambre, or something pretty; and I hadn't the heart to show him the funereal abodes which with us correspond to that Parisian arrangement for bachelor happiness. Poor, pale Lucy, when I spoke to her about De Boeuf, and his account of the accommodations for single men in Paris, said, in her faint, sweet way, "I am glad to hear that bachelors can be made happy"-and then glanced at the grim, square portrait of old Nee Britchiz upon the dingy wall, and the ghost of a smile glimmered upon her face, as if her matrimonial life with the ancient book-keeper had been so happy!

"Well," said Moelle, "even if I couldn't find pleasant apartments, I can get some sunshine out of a good dinner. Just show me your best cafés-your Trois Frèresyour Café Anglais-Maison Dorée-Café de Paris, &c."

So I took him-this flâneur-this spray of la jeunesse dorée-to whom a substantial aroma was a light lunch, and showed him our cafés-the holes in the sides of the street where steaming Babylon gorges its dinner, and considers the necessity of mastication a blunder in the organization of nature, as wasting precious time.

I avoided him after that; I never dared to meet him again. But once I could not escape. It was at Mrs. Parr Venoo's great fancy ball, in her great fancy house upon the Twentieth Avenue. Moelle de Boeuf, quivering with jewelry, wandered mournfully around the rooms, constantly "setting" his face-that long, bird-like face, with round blank eyes, and a heavily-hooked moustache-between the heads of people in the crowd, so that many of the most sprightly belles looked as if they had a forlorn owl perched upon their shoulders. He said nothing-this patentleathered Molle de Boeuf, quivering with jewelry-but the expression of his face, as he gloomed and glowered from every corner of the rooms, apostrophized our native land thus: "Oh, unhappy country, which forces men to marry, that they may have a decent place to live in, and a decent dinner to eat! I wonder no more at your lank-visaged children-their solemnity is intelligible now! Oh, unspeakable land! where, in the fury of making a living, men forget to live!"

And the owl flitted from fashionable shoulder to fashionable shoulder, impressing me so deeply, that I can rarely mingle even now in the social festivities of Baby

lon without seeming to see the solemn, silent, ewelled, patent-leathered Molle de Boeuf, languishing for the Boulevards and the amenities of Paris.

But this is partly digressive. I left myself coming down to breakfast. A boarding-house breakfast is-but no matter. "It's of no consequence."

Breakfast over, I brushed my hat, put on my gloves, took a final survey of the general effect of Andrew Cranberry in the square mirror, over the high mantel, upon which stood two solemn spectral old candlesticks, that seemed to have only officiated as light-givers at funerals, evening meetings, and other melancholy occasions, and did not at all suggest brilliant festivity, clouds of flounced muslin, French flowers, music, perfume, smiles, and all the delicious jam and crush of an evening party. Poor old candlesticks! I suppose they are there yet, summing up in themselves the dreariness of the house, and presiding. in severe stiffness, over the desolation of those dingy parlors.

Thank Heaven! we are now about stepping into the sunshine.

I opened the door. How warm and kindly streamed the sun against mehearty, broad and cordial as Carlo's welcome upon my annual visit to him. It put me in gay good humor directly:

"Never, believe me,

Appear the immortals,
Never alone,"

whispered I to myself, as I stepped briskly down the street, enjoying a good deal of joking and laughing with myself at my own expense, for harping so constantly upon the lines.

(6 Andrew," ," said I jocosely, but confidentially, "Cranberry, you unconscionable wretch! you know that you expect something to come out of this little incident of the poem-you know perfectly well, that you are on the look-out for adventures."

"Not at all," said I, with the air of a man delighted that his secret is discovered, but too proud to own it,-"It has happened a thousand times before. I often wake up with the fragment of a tune in my mind, and go on humming and singing it, all day long. Oh no! it's a pleasant little incident, that's all. shows that Blackstone and Chitty and the Admiralty practice, and all the rest of that preposterous rubbish heaped up in little stout calf covers, and called Law, has not driven poetry out of my head."

It

"I should rather say not," said Mr. Andrew Cranberry, Attorney-at-Law, quietly smiling at his own thoughts.

At that moment a dark object fell flut

tering at my feet. It was a black lace veil, which I lost no time in picking up, and looking about for the owner. Nobody could have dropped it but a woman of slight figure, and dressed in black, whom I saw hurrying along the street, and who must have unconsciously dropped it as she passed me. Of course, I instantly matured a theory of the perfect youth and beauty of the slight lady in black, and hurried after her with the most gallant of bland smiles upon my face,

"Permit me, madam," said I, accosting her, and holding my hat a little removed from my head, as College Professors hold theirs when they pass in between the students to the Commencement Dinner-"is this, possibly, your veil ?"

A pair of surprised black eyes answered me with a glance so expressive that my hat came quite off in my hand, and I ended my address with a most respectful bow.

"Thank you, it is mine;" was all the response I received, and the next moment the dark slight figure was floating along as before, and Andrew Cranberry stood alone upon the sidewalk.

But for a moment only. To jeer at myself for stopping and staring, instead of investigating further the history of the surprised black eyes, was the business of a fleeting instant-to follow and proffer courteous attentions was the inspiration and the action of the next.

Fair reader! be not alarmed, nor fear that when you chance to drop your veil, you therefore expose yourself to the insults, or the attentions, of any chance Cranberry; not at all. I simply followed the invitation of the eyes, in following that slight figure floating along the street; and if you, Moelle De Boeuf, or any other French-minded man, dares suppose that those eyes might not have been the pure orbs of Rosamund Gray herself, you do foul wrong to a maiden, and to the character of an irreproachable Attorneyat-Law.

No, no. The invitation was entirely involuntary and unconscious upon the part of the lady, but it was of that character which permitted me directly to accept it. Had the lady-O floating figure, forgive the word,-winked, in acknowledgment of my handing the veil, I should instantly have hailed an omnibus, or rushed into the Bowery to take the

cars.

I rapidly gained upon her. I reached her side. It was a lonely part of the street, and there were no noisy carriagewheels to drown the sound of my voice

with their roar. Then, with all the respect of a Crusader kneeling to the image of his lady upon his shield, I said"Madam, may I hope that the little service I have rendered you is but the beginning of

She turned toward me. I saw again the surprised black eyes fixed full upon me. You, Malle De Bœuf, would have withered in that glance, because it was not alone surprise but indignation. I too should have trembled and shrunk away, if I had not been full of the fairest intentions. Meaning nothing but what the Chevalier Bayard, without fear and without reproach, might have meant, I stood my ground manfully, and continued,

"I am perfectly aware how singular, and preposterous this conduct may seem, but I may never see you again, and—and, and I want to know you," said I, trusting to Providence.

"It is singular, sir," said a low sweet voice, "to accost a lady whom you do not know in this way, and in the street. You are mistaken, sir. I will wait until you retire."

She stood still, but I could see a little mournfulness in her eyes, as if she were grieved that a man whose aspect had pleased her (I knew that immediately), should disappoint her, and prove to be only a Moelle De Boeuf, after all.

66 Madam," ," said I, "you do me a great wrong, if you fancy that I have any thought which you would not honor. I have indulged a whim in speaking to you, but I do most solemnly assure you, it was the result of a genuine wish to know you." And I pulled out my card-case, and handed her a card, Mr. Andrew Cranberry.

"Mr. Cranberry," replied the lady, "I am willing to believe what you say; and, looking in your face, I do believe it. Yet I do not know why you should wish to know me, whom you have never before seen, and whom you could hardly expect to see again. Propriety, Mr. Cranberry, the usage of the world, &c., &c.," continued she with a slight smile, "would require me to order your instant departure; but I am able to take care of myself, and I am confident you mean no wrong."

So saying, the lady resumed her walk, and I accompanied her. She had that subdued, sweet manner, which implies a latent grief-a sorrow that has become a habit. The quiet self-possession revealed a character moulded by actual contact with the world, a manner more beautiful to me than the conventional reserve and timidity of the daughters of my Twentieth Avenue friend, Mrs. Parr Venoo. Our

conversation fell upon obvious topics, but in all she said there was a maidenly wisdom which was no less new than fascinating. I do not very distinctly remember what we said. It was that glancing talk by the way, of which the spirit, the tone and the feeling are so much more than the words.

66

I only remember this, that with every step of the way, I went whole leagues into love. She belonged to no set" with which I was familiar. She knew none of the fashionable ladies. She had no gossip. The walk with her was like a warm day in winter-like a summer week in the country to a tired Pearlstreet Jobber. She knew the poetry of the poets I loved, the music of the composers most dear to me. But in all she said, and in all I asked, there was no allusion to her situation in life,-nothing which informed me with whom I was speaking.

Suddenly-it was somewhere in the Twenty-second Avenue-she paused before the door of a small house in a poor block. There was a sign under the front windows "Madame Beignet de Pomme, Milliner from Paris." She went up the steps leaving me standing upon the sidewalk.

"I thank you for a very pleasant walk," said she, as she rang the bell. "Is this your home?" inquired I. "Yes, for the present," answered she. "You are a milliner ?" "I am a milliner."

"You are not Madame De Pomme?" "I am not Madame De Pomme."

It was evident that she did not choose to be questioned further in that direction, and I said no more.

"Will you allow me to come and see you sometimes ?" asked I.

She did not immediately answer, but stood looking on the ground and thinking, at length she said; "Mr. Cranberry, I am quite alone in this city; in fact, have scarcely a friend. You will understand, therefore, how easy it is for people to speak ill of me. Yet I am not willing to lose all the pleasure of such society as I most enjoy (and which I rarely meet), because evil tongues wag so readily. If I consent to see you, I shall do so at a great sacrifice."

As she spoke, a fiery gloom gathered in her eyes, like jealous passion in the eyes of a Spanish girl. "It is a wicked world," she continued; "that will not let me see a friend, without slandering my reputation. But if you will sometimes come to see me, I shall not hesitate to receive you."

She said it with a firm emphasis, as if

forcing down the suggestions of timidity and pride.

"Good morning, Mr. Cranberry," said she as the door opened, and she passed into the house.

Andrew Cranberry, Attorney-at-Law, went down to his office, and did a very confused day's work. I do not think he said any thing to any body that had not the strictest relation to business. In the intervals of work he looked into the little court beneath his window, in which the prospect consisted of the iron shutters and dingy brick wall of the stores opposite, and where the sunshine looked pale and sickly, and dead; and saw nothing there but June days in a pleasant country, with broad acres of wild flowers, and waving grain, and the edges of green woods, and a gentle lawn sloping to a river. He saw a house too, as he looked into the dead sunlight of the court, an easy, rambling, wooden country-house, with a piazza, and vines wreathing the columns, and pots of flowers in the windows. Upon the piazza, as he still looked, in the softest of summer days, sat a figure quietly sewing, and he thought he heard the murmur of a low song. If the deep dark eyes of that figure had ever been sad, they were so no longer,-if the sweet and noble manner had ever seemed to betray a habit of grief, it had utterly

lost it now, there was pure summer in the sky, summer on the landscape, summer in those eyes and in the repose of that figure. But even while he gazed, two or three smaller figures came bounding up the gentle lawn from the river, with a huge shaggy black Newfoundland dog. He was sure he heard the loud and happy shouts of children, he was sure the figure, quietly working, raised the black eyes not surprised, but with a tranquil and maternal delight—and, wildest vision of all-he was sure that in the window of a library opening upon the piazza, and watching that group with eyes moist with happiness, stood, in a loose coat and slippers, and leaning against the side of the window, with his forefinger in a book, Andrew Cranberry, Attorney-at-Law. And, by Jove! as he looked into that pale, sickly sunshine of the court, he was sure he heard that figure speak to the lady, and say

"Never, believe me, Appear the immortals, Never alone!"

-Whether all this had any thing to do with a certain card that was ordered to be engraved within six months of the day that the veil was picked up, is a curious inquiry. That card ran thus:

Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Cranberry,