I don't know anything sweeter than this leaking in of Nature through all the cracks in the walls and floors of cities. You heap up a million tons of hewn rocks on a square mile or two of earth which was green once. The trees look down from the hillsides and ask each other, as they stand on tiptoe, "What are these people about?" And the small herbs at their feet look up and whisper back,-"We will go and see." So the small herbs pack themselves up in the least possible bundles, and wait until the wind steals to them at night and whispers,-"Come with me." Then they go softly with it into the great city, one to a cleft in the pavement, one to a spout on the roof, one to a seam in the marbles over a rich gentleman's bones, and one to the grave without a stone where nothing but a man is buried, — and there they grow, looking down on the generations of men from moldy roofs, looking up from between the less-trodden pavements, looking out through iron cemetery railings. Listen to them, when there is only a light breath stirring, and you will hear them saying to each other,"Wait "Wait awhile!" The words run along the telegraph of those narrow green lines that border the roads leading from the city, until they reach the slope of the hills, and the trees repeat in low murmurs to each other, "Wait awhile!" By and by the flow of life in the street ebbs, and the old leafy inhabitants — the smaller tribes always in front—saunter in, one by one, very careless seemingly, but very tenacious, until they swarm so that the great stones gape from each other with the crowding of their roots, and the feldspar begins to be picked out of the granite to find them food. At last the trees take up their solemn line of march, and never rest until they have encamped in the market place. Wait long enough and you will find an old doting oak hugging a huge worn block in its yellow underground arms; that was the corner stone of the State House. Oh, so patient she is, this imperturbable Nature! Let us cry! But all this has nothing to do with my walks and talks with the schoolmistress. I did not say that I would not tell you something about them. Let me alone, and I shall talk to you more than I ought to, probably. We never tell our secrets to people that pump for them. Books we talked about, and education. It was her duty to know something of these, and of course she did. Perhaps -- I was somewhat more learned than she, but I found that the difference between her reading and mine was like that of a man's and a woman's dusting a library. The man flaps about with a bunch of feathers; the woman goes to work softly with a cloth. She does not raise half the dust, nor fill her own eyes and mouth with it, but she goes into all the corners, and attends to the leaves as much as the covers. Books are the negative pictures of thought, and the more sensitive the mind that receives their images, the more nicely the finest lines are reproduced. A woman, (of the right kind,) reading after a man, follows him as Ruth followed the reapers of Boaz, and her gleanings are often the finest of the wheat. But it was in talking of Life that we came most nearly together. I thought I knew something about that, that I could speak or write about it somewhat to the purpose. To take up this fluid earthly being of ours as a sponge sucks up water, to be steeped and soaked in its realities as a hide fills its pores lying seven years in a tan pit,-to have winnowed every wave of it as a mill wheel works up the stream that runs through the flume upon its float boards, to have curled up in the keenest spasms and flattened out in the laxest languors of this breathing sickness which keeps certain parcels of matter uneasy for three or four score years, to have fought all the devils and clasped all the angels of its delirium, and then, just at the point when the white-hot passions have cooled down to cherry-red, plunge our experience into the ice-cold stream of some human language or other, one might think would end in a rhapsody with something of spring and temper in it. All this I thought my power and province. The schoolmistress had tried life, too. Once in a while one meets with a single soul greater than all the living pageant that passes before it. As the pale astronomer sits in his study with sunken eyes and thin fingers, and weighs Uranus or Neptune as in a balance, so there are meek, slight women who have weighed all that this planetary life can offer, and hold it like a bauble in the palm of their slender hands. This was one of them. Fortune had left her, sorrow had baptized her; the routine of labor and the loneliness of almost friendless city life were before her. Yet, as I looked upon her tranquil face, gradually regaining a cheerfulness that was often sprightly, as she became interested in the various matters we talked about and places we visited, I saw that eye and lip and every shifting lineament were made for love, unconscious of their sweet office as yet, and meeting the cold aspect of Duty with the natural graces which were meant for the reward of nothing less than the Great Passion. -I never spoke one word of love to the schoolmistress in the course of these pleasant walks. It seemed to me that we talked of everything but love on that particular morning. There was, perhaps, a little more timidity and hesitancy on my part than I have commonly shown among our people at the boarding house. In fact, I considered myself the master of the breakfast table; but, somehow, I could not command myself just then so well as usual. The truth is, I had secured a passage to Liverpool in the steamer which was to leave at noon, with the condition, however, of being released in case circumstances occurred to detain me. The schoolmistress knew nothing about all this, of course, as yet. It was on the Common that we were walking. The mall, or boulevard of our Common, you know, has various branches leading from it in different directions. One of these runs downward from opposite Joy Street southward across the whole length of the Common to Boylston Street. We called it the long path, and were fond of it. I felt very weak indeed (though of a tolerably robust habit) as we came opposite the head of this path on that morning. I think I tried to speak twice without making myself distinctly audible. At last I got out the question, - Will you take the long path with me?-Certainly, said the schoolmistress,— with much pleasure. Think,—I said,- before you answer; if you take the long path with me now, I shall interpret it that we are to part no more!-The schoolmistress stepped back with a sudden movement, as if an arrow had struck her. One of the long granite blocks used as seats was hard by,the one you may still see close by the Gingko tree. - Pray, sit down, I said.- No, no,- she answered softly, — I will walk the long path with you! The old gentleman who sits opposite met us walking, arm in arm, about the middle of the long path, and said, very charmingly, "Good morning, my dears!" THE DEACON'S MASTERPIECE: OR THE WONDERFUL "ONE-HOSS SHAY." A LOGICAL STORY. BY OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. [OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES: An American humorist and poet; born in Cambridge, Mass., August 29, 1809; died in Boston, October 7, 1894. He graduated at Harvard in 1829; became professor of anatomy and physiology at Dartmouth; then at Harvard 1847-1882, when he retired as professor emeritus. His first work to attract general attention was "The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table," in the Atlantic Monthly (1857-1858), followed by "The Professor at the Breakfast Table" and "The Poet at the Breakfast Table." His other prose works include the novels “Elsie Venner," "The Guardian Angel,” and “A Mortal Antipathy"; memoirs of Motley and Emerson; "One Hundred Days in Europe"; "Over the Teacups.' His poems have been collected in "Songs in Many Keys," " 'Songs of Many Seasons," "Humorous Poems," "Before the Curfew," etc.] HAVE you heard of the wonderful one-hoss shay, It ran a hundred years to a day, And then, of a sudden, it-ah, but stay, I'll tell you what happened without delay, Frightening people out of their wits, say ? Seventeen hundred and fifty-five, It was on the terrible Earthquake day Now in building of chaises, I tell you what, |