13. Joice was busy, and his wife was directing, and all were happy. But let no man hereafter pronounce an evening blessed, before the hour of supper has closed. Joice had complained already, that she wanted things to do with; and on the narrow table in the kitchen, she had overturned a lamp and oiled the bottom of the great dish, on which the turkey was to be presented on the supper table.

14. It became slippery, her fingers were slippery, and she was half blind; as she came waddling into the supper room, with the treasures of her cookery, she stumbled, struck the poor spliced legs of the dining-table; the patchwork gave way; down went the table, dishes and sauces, on the ladies' gowns; down went poor Joice in the midst of them; the fishline was revealed, the torn place in the table-cloth was seen, torn still more disastrously; my neighbor looked aghast, his wife was in tears, and the whole company were in confusion.

15. My neighbor however, tried to jump out of his condition like a cat out of a corner. "So much for Mr. Hardwood, our cabinet-maker; I had just ordered a new table, but he never sends home his work in time." In saying this he did not tell a lie; he just told half the truth. He had ordered a new table; and Mr. Hardwood had not sent it in time; but then he distinctly told the reason; and that was, he should not send it, until he settled off the old score.

16. "O poverty, poverty!" I must allow, poverty is bad enough, though not so terrible when it comes alone. But avert from me the mingled horrors of pride and poverty, when they come upon us together!

LESSON CXXIV.

FORMATION OF CHARACTER.

MRS. TUTHILL.

1. WHEN a young man has finished his collegiate course of education, he enters immediately upon the study of the profession, or into the business, which he is to pursue. He

looks forward with eager anticipation to the time when his name shall be honored among his fellow-men, or his coffers overflow with wealth, or when he shall be the messenger of mercy, and win many from the error of their ways. His course of study is still plainly marked out. He does not waste time in the choice of a pursuit, for his natural talents, the habitual bias of his mind, or the wishes of friends, have already decided the question.

2. Not so with a young lady. Having passed through the usual studies at school, in a desultory manner, generally too desultory to produce a disciplined, well balanced mind, she considers her education finished, or continues it without any special object in view.

3. Perhaps, my young friends, you have been absent for years from the home of your childhood; its gayer visions have flitted away; life begins to assume a sober reality. Casting a mournful glance of retrospection, you inquire, of what value is the little knowledge acquired, if I go no farther? Like an armory in time of peace, arranged with much attempt at display, it seems brilliant and useless. You have, indeed, been collecting the weapons for life's warfare; their temper is not yet tried, but the strife has already begun.

4. This is the season for castle-building. How fascinating the rainbow visions that flit before a vivid imagination, yet how dangerous the indulgence! Exhausted with these wanderings, wild lassitude and ennui succeed.

"Fancy enervates, while it soothes, the heart,

And, while it dazzles, wounds the mental sight
To joy each heightening charm it can impart,
But wraps the hour of woe in tenfold night.

5. As their only resource, many young ladies in town rush with eagerness into society, drowning reflection in the all-absorbing career of fashionable gayety, filling up its brief intervals with novel-reading. Those whose home is in the country are disgusted with this "working-day world," and its plain, good folks.

6. Their refined education has unfitted them for cordial companionship with their friends and neighbors, whose useful common sense they can not appreciate, and whose virtues, unadorned by the graces of polished life, they cannot admire. Too often, making no effort to settle themselves to the employments that should now devolve upon them, they live in a world of their own creation, or find one equally well fitted to their taste in the contents of the nearest circulating library.

7. Instead of wasting this precious period in fascinating dreams of future happiness, in enervating idleness, or unsatisfying gayety, let me urge upon you, my kind readers, the importance of the present golden moments. Sheltered beneath the paternal roof, guarded from outward evil by the vigilance of love, the perplexing cares and overwhelming anxieties of life are not yet yours. You now enjoy the best possible opportunity to gain a knowledge of yourself, your disposition, habits, prejudices, purposes, acquirements, deficiences, principles.

8. Much may have been done for you by parents and teachers; the strength of the foundation they have laid will be tested by the superstructure, which must be built by yourself. Cheerfully, then, commence that self-education, without which all other education is comparatively useless. Shrink not from your high responsibilities; He who has encompassed you with them will give you strength for their fulfilment.

9. Has he not showered benefits upon you with unsparing hand? Your country, is it not a blessed one? Parents, kindred, friends, talents, and the means for improving them; competence, wealth; does not your heart overflow with gratitude to the Giver? he grants you that quiet home, where you may prepare yourself for another, with more tender affections, and more solemn responsibilities, and for another still beyond, and not very far distant, a home in heaven.

Even now,

10. Woman's lot may be deemed a lowly one by those who look not into the deeper mysteries of human life; who know not the silent, resistless influences that mould the intellectual and moral character of mankind. Woman's lot is a high and

fatal blow is given! and the victim passes without a struggle or a motion, from the repose of sleep to the repose of death! The deed is done. He retreats, retraces his steps to the window, passes out through it as he came in, and escapes. He has done the murder; no eye has seen him, no ear has heard him.

5. The secret is his own, and it is safe! Ah! gentlemen, that was a dreadful mistake. Such a secret can be safe nowhere. The whole creation of God has neither nook nor corner where the guilty can bestow it, and say it is safe. A thousand eyes turn at once to explore every man, everything, and every circumstance, connected with the time and place; a thousand ears catch every whisper; a thousand excited minds intensely dwell on the scene, shedding all their light, and ready to kindle the slightest circumstance into a blaze of discovery.

6. Meantime the guilty soul cannot keep its own secret. It is false to itself; or rather, it feels an irresistible impulse of conscience to be true to itself. It labors under its guilty possession, and knows not what to do with it. He feels it beating at his heart, rising to his throat, and demanding disclosure. He thinks that the whole world sees it in his face, reads it in his eyes, and almost hears its workings in the very silence of his thoughts.

7. It betrays his discretion, it breaks down his courage, it conquers his prudence. When suspicions from without begin to embarrass him, and the net of circumstance to entangle him, the fatal secret struggles with still greater violence to burst forth. It must be confessed, it will be confessed, there is no refuge from confession but suicide, and suicide is confession.

a Conscience; that moral faculty of the mind which decides what is right or wrong from the facts presented.

LESSON CXVIII.

EULOGY ON HAMILTON."

MASON.

1. He was born to be great. Whoever was second, Hamilton must be first. To his stupendous and versatile mind no investigation was difficult, no subject presented which he did not illuminate. Superiority in some particular, belongs to thousands. Preeminence, in whatever he chose to undertake, was the prerogative of Hamilton. No fixed criterion could be applied to his talents. Often has their display been supposed to have reached the limit of human effort; and the judgment stood firm till set aside by himself.

2. When a cause of new magnitude required new exertions he rose, he towered, he soared; surpassing himself as he surpassed others. Then was nature tributary to his eloquence! Then was felt his despotism over the heart! Touching, at his pleasure, every string of pity or terror, of indignation or grief, he melted, he soothed, he roused, he agitated; alternately gentle as the dews, and awful as the thunder.

3. Yet, great as he was in the eyes of the world, he was greater in the eyes of those with whom he was most conversant. The greatness of most men, like objects seen through a mist, diminishes with the distance; but Hamilton, like a tower seen afar off under a clear sky, rose in grandeur and sublimity with every step of approach. Familiarity with him was the parent of veneration.

4. Over these matchless talents, probity threw her brightest luster. Frankness, suavity, tenderness, benevolence, breathed through their exercise. And to his family! but he is gone. That noble heart beats no more; that eye of fire is dimmed; and sealed are those oracular lips. Americans, the serenest beam of your glory is extinguished in the tomb!

a Hamilton (Alexander); an orator and statesman, born at Nevis India islands.

one of the West