"Pipes!" echoed Minora, greatly disgusted by such vulgarity. “I'm afraid I can't help you," I said, as she continued . to choke and splutter; "we are all in the same case, and I don't know how to alter it." "There are such things as forks, I suppose," snapped Minora. 5 "That's true," said I, crushed by the obviousness of the remedy; but of what use are forks if they are fifteen miles off? So Minora had to continue to eat her gloves. 10 By the time we had finished the sun was already low behind the trees and the clouds beginning to flush a faint pink. The old coachman was given sandwiches and soup, and while he led the horses up and down with one hand and held his lunch in the other, we packed up 15 or, to be correct, I packed, and the others looked on and gave me valuable advice. This coachman, Peter by name, is seventy years old, and was born on the place, and has driven its occupants for fifty years, and I am nearly as fond of him as I am 20 of the sun-dial; indeed, I don't know what I should do without him, so entirely does he appear to understand and approve of my tastes and wishes. No drive is too long or difficult for the horses if I want to take it, no place impossible to reach if I want to go to it, no 25 weather or roads too bad to prevent my going out if I wish to to all my suggestions he responds with the readiest cheerfulness. In the summer, on fine evenings, I love to drive late and alone in the scented forests, and when I have reached a dark part stop, and sit quite still, listening to the nightingales repeating their little tune over and over again after interludes of gurgling, or, if there are no nightingales, listening to the marvel5 ous silence, and letting its blessedness descend into my very soul. The nightingales in the forests about here all sing the same tune, and in the same key-E flat : 3 I don't know whether all nightingales do this, or if it is peculiar to this particular spot. When they have sung 10 it once they clear their throats a little, and hesitate, and then do it again, and it is the prettiest little song in the world. How could I indulge my passion for these drives with their pauses without Peter? He is so used to them that he stops now at the right moment without 15 having to be told, and he is ready to drive me all night if I wish it, with no sign of anything but cheerful willingness on his nice old face. The brightness of Peter's perfections is sullied, however, by one spot, and that is, that as age creeps upon 20 him, he not only cannot hold the horses in if they don't want to be held in, but he goes to sleep sometimes on his box if I have him out too soon after lunch, and has upset me twice within the last year — once last winter out of a sleigh, and once this summer, when 25 the horses shied at a bicycle, and bolted into the ditch on one side of the high-road, and the bicycle was so terrified at the horses shying that it shied too into the ditch on the other side, and the carriage was smashed, and the bicycle was smashed, and we were all very unhappy, except Peter, who never lost his pleasant smile, and looked so placid that my tongue clave to 5 the roof of my mouth when I tried to make it scold him. "But I should think he ought to have been thoroughly scolded on an occasion like that," said Minora, to whom I had been telling this story as we wandered on the 10 yellow sands while the horses were being put in the sleigh; and she glanced nervously up at Peter, whose mild head was visible between the bushes above us. "Shall we get home before dark?" she asked. The sun had altogether disappeared behind the pines 15 and only the very highest of the little clouds were still pink; out at sea the mists were creeping up, and the sails of the fishing-smacks had turned a dull brown; a flight of wild geese passed across the disk of the moon with loud cacklings. "Before dark?" echoed Irais; "I should think not. It is dark now nearly in the forest, and we shall have the loveliest moonlight drive back." "But it is surely very dangerous to let a man who goes to sleep drive you," said Minora apprehensively. "But he's such an old dear," I said. "Yes, yes, no doubt," she replied testily; "but there are wakeful old dears to be had, and on a box they are preferable." 20 25 Irais laughed. "You are growing quite amusing, Miss Minora," she said. "He is n't on a box to-day," said I; "and I never 5 knew him to go to sleep standing up behind us on a sleigh." Peter, however, behaved beautifully on the way home, and Irais and I at least were as happy as possible driving back, with all the glories of the western sky flashing at 10 us every now and then at the end of a long avenue as we swiftly passed, and later on, when they had faded, myriads of stars in the narrow black strip of sky over our heads. From Elizabeth and her German Garden." NATURE. RALPH WALDO EMERSON. The rounded world is fair to see, And hints the future which it owes. THERE are days which occur in this climate, at almost any season of the year, wherein the world. reaches its perfection; when the air, the heavenly bodies, and the earth make a harmony, as if nature would indulge her offspring; when, in these bleak upper 5 sides of the planet, nothing is to desire that we have heard of the happiest latitudes, and we bask in the shining hours of Florida and Cuba; when everything that has life gives sign of satisfaction, and the cattle that lie on the ground seem to have great and tranquil 10 thoughts. These halcyons may be looked for with a little more assurance in that pure October weather which we distinguish by the name of the Indian summer. The day, immeasurably long, sleeps over the broad hills and 15 warm wide fields. To have lived through all its sunny |