"We are a busy people here, sir, and have no time for that," was the reply.

So the ladies passed out in single file, Mr. Jefferson Brick and such other married gentlemen as were left, acknowledging the departure of their other halves by a nod; and there was an end of them. Martin thought this an uncomfortable custom, but he kept his opinion to himself for the present, being anxious to hear, and inform himself, by the conversation of the busy gentlemen, who now lounged about the stove as if a great weight had been taken off their minds by the withdrawal of the other sex, and who made a plentiful use of the spittoons and their toothpicks.

It was rather barren of interest, to say the truth; and the greater part of it may be summed up in one word. Dollars. All their cares, hopes, joys, affections, virtues, and associations seemed to be melted down into dollars. Whatever the chance contributions that fell into the slow caldron of their talk, they made the gruel thick and slab with dollars. Men were weighed by their dollars, measures gauged by their dollars; life was auctioneered, appraised, put up, and knocked down for its dollars. The next respectable thing to dollars was any venture having their attainment for its end. The more of that worthless ballast, honor and fair dealing, which any man cast overboard from the ship of his Good Name and Good Intent, the more ample stowage room he had for dollars. Make commerce one huge lie and mighty theft. Deface the banner of the nation for an idle rag; pollute it star by star; and cut out stripe by stripe as from the arm of a degraded soldier. Do anything for dollars! What is a flag to them!

One who rides at all hazards of limb and life in the chase of a fox, will prefer to ride recklessly at most times. So it was with these gentlemen. He was the greatest patriot, in their eyes, who brawled the loudest, and who cared the least for decency. He was their champion, who in the brutal fury of his own pursuit could cast no stigma upon them, for the hot knavery of theirs. Thus, Martin learned in the five minutes' straggling talk about the stove, that to carry pistols into legislative assemblies, and swords in sticks, and other such peaceful toys; to seize opponents by the throat, as dogs or rats might do; to bluster, bully, and overbear by personal assailment ; were glowing deeds. Not thrusts and stabs at Freedom, strik

ing far deeper into her House of Life than any sultan's scimitar could reach; but rare incense on her altars, having a grateful scent in patriotic nostrils, and curling upward to the seventh heaven of Fame.

MARGARET GOES TO MEETING.

BY SYLVESTER JUDD.

(From "Margaret.")

[SYLVESTER JUDD: An American author; born at Westhampton, Mass., July 23, 1813; died at Augusta, Me., January 20, 1853. His father was a noted antiquarian. The son was graduated from Yale in 1836 and from Harvard Divinity School in 1840. He was pastor of the Unitarian church at Augusta, Me., from 1840 until his death. His greatest work, "Margaret: A Tale of the Real and Ideal," was published in 1845. His subsequent works include: "Philio: an Evangeliad" (1850), "Richard Edney, and the Governor's Family " (1850), "The Church: in a Series of Discourses" (1854), and “The White Hills,” a tragedy in five acts, left in manuscript.]

It was a Sabbath morning, a June Sabbath morning, a June Sabbath morning in New England.

Margaret had never been to Meeting; the family did not go. If there were no other indisposing causes, Pluck himself expressly forbade the practice, and trained his children to very different habits and feelings. They did not work on the Sabbath, but idled and drank. Margaret had no quilling, or carding, or going after rum to do; she was wont to sally into the woods, clamber up the Head and tend her flowers; or Chilion played and she sang, he whittled trellises for her vines, mended her cages, sailed with her on the Pond. She heard the bell ring in the morning, she saw Obed and his mother go by to meeting, and she had sometimes wished to go too, but her father would never consent; so that the Sabbath, although not more than two miles off, was no more to her than is one half the world to the other half.

From the private record of Deacon Hadlock we take the following:

State vs. Didymus Hart. Stafford, ss. Be it remembered, that on the nineteenth day of August, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, Didymus Hart of Livingston, in the County of Stafford, shoemaker and laborer,

is brought before me, Nathan Hadlock, Esq., a Justice of Peace for and within the aforesaid county, by Hopestill Cutts, Constable of Livingston aforesaid, by warrant issued by me, the said Justice, on the day aforesaid, against the said Didymus Hart, at Livingston aforesaid, on the twelfth day of May last, being the Lord's day, did walk, recreate, and disport himself on the south side of the Pond lying in the West District, so called, of Livingston aforesaid; which is contrary to the law of this State made and provided in such cases, and against the peace of this State, all which is to the evil example of all others in like case offending.

Wherefore [witnesses being heard, etc.], it doth appear to me, the said Justice, that the said Didymus Hart sit in the stocks for two hours.

Pluck was disposed of in the manner prescribed, very much to the entertainment of the boys, who spattered him with eggs, the disturbance and exasperation of his wife, who preferred that all inflictions her husband received should come from herself, and quite resented the interference of others, and his own chagrin and vexation; especially as the informer in the case was Otis Joy, father of Zenas, a Breakneck, whose friendship he did not value, and Cutts, the executive officer, was the village shoemaker, and no agreeable rival, and the Justice was Deacon Hadlock. By way of redress, he chose to keep from meeting entirely, and suffered none under his control to go.

But Chilion and Nimrod both urged that Margaret might attend church at least once in her life, and her father at length consented...

Margaret started away with a dreamy sense of mystery attaching to the Meeting, like a snowstorm by moonlight, and a lively feeling of childish curiosity. On the smooth in front of the house, her little white and yellow chickens were peeping and dodging under the low mallows with its bluish rose-colored flowers, the star-tipped hedge mustard, and pink-tufted smartweed, and picking off the blue and green flies that were sunning on the leaves; and they did not seem to mind her. Hash had taken Bull into the woods, and Chilion told her she would not need him. Dick, her squirrel, and Robin, were disposed to follow, but her mother called them back. A little yellow-poll, perched in the Butternut, whistled after her, "Whooee whee whee whee whittiteetee- as soon as I get this green caterpillar, I will go too." A rusty wren screamed out to her, "Os's's' chipper w' w' w' wow wow wow - O shame, Molly, I am going to

rob an oriole's nest, I wouldn't go to Meeting." She entered the Mowing; a bobolink clung tiltering to the breezy tip of a white birch, and said, "Pee wuh' wuh' ch' tut, tut, tee tee wuh' wuh' wdle wdle pee wee a a wdle dee dee-now Molly here are red clover, yellow buttercups, white daisies, and strawberries in the grass; ecod! how the wind blows! what a grand time we shall have, let us stay here to-day." A grass finch skippered to the top of a stump, and thrusting up its bill, cried out, "Chee chee chee up chip' chip' chipperway ouble weeglad you are going, you'll get good to-day, don't stop, the bell is tolling." She thought of the murderer, snatched a large handful of flowers, and hurried on, driven forward as it were by a breeze of gladness in her own thoughts and of vernal aroma from the fields. She gathered the large bindweed, that lay on its back floating over the lot, like pond lilies, with its red and white cups turned to the sun; and also, the beautiful purple cran's bill, and blue-eyed grass. She came to the shadows of the woods that skirted the Mowing, where she got bunchberries, and star-of-Bethlehems. She entered a cool, grassy recess in the forest, where were beds of purple twin flower, yellow stargrass, blue violets, and mosses growing together, familylike, under the stately three-leaved ferns that overhung them like elm trees, while above were the birches and walnuts. A blackcap k' d' chanked, k' d' chanked, over her head, and a wood thrush whoot whoot whooted ting a ring tinged in earnest unison, "We are going to have a meeting here to-day, a little titmouse is coming to be christened, won't you stop?" But a woodpecker rapped and rattled over among the chestnuts, and on she went. She crossed the Tree Bridge, and followed the brook that flowed with a winsome glee, and while she looked at the flies and spiders dancing on the dark water, she heard a little yellow-throated flycatcher, mournfully saying, "Preeo, preea preeeeo preeeea - pray, Margaret, you'll lose your soul if you don't;" and she saw a wood pewee up among the branches, with her dark head bowed over, plaintively singing, "P' p' ee ee ou wee, p' p' ee ee ou wee' - Jesus be true to you, Margaret, I have lost my love, and my heart is sad, a blue angel come down from the skies, and fold us both in his soft feathers." Here she got the white-clustering baneberry, and the little nodding buff cucumber root.

The Via Dolorosa became to Margaret to-day a via jucundissima, a very pleasant way. Through what some would

consider rough woods and bleak pasture land, in a little sheeptrack, crooked and sometimes steep, over her hung like a white cloud the wild thorn tree, large gold-dusted cymes of viburnums, rose-blooming lambkill, and other sorts, suggested all she knew, and more than she knew, of the Gardens of Princes. The feathery moss on the old rocks, dewy and glistening, was full of fairy feeling. A chorus of flycatchers, as in ancient Greek worship, from their invisible gallery in the greenwood, responded one to another; -"Whee whoo whee, wee woo woo wee, whee whoo, whoo whoo wee-God bless the little Margaret! How glad we are she is going to Meeting at last. She shall have berries, nut cakes, and good preaching. The little Isabel and Job Luce are there. How do you think she will like Miss Amy?"

Emerging in Deacon Hadlock's Pasture, she added to her stock red sorrel blossoms, pink azaleas, and sprigs of pennyroyal. Then she sorted her collection, tying the different parcels with spears of grass. The Town was before her silent and motionless, save the neighing of horses and squads of dogs that traipsed to and fro on the Green. The sky was blue and tender; the clouds in white veils, like nuns, worshiped in the sunbeams; the woods behind murmured their reverence; and birds sang psalms. All these sights, sounds, odors, suggestions, were not, possibly, distinguished by Margaret, in their sharp individuality, or realized in the bulk of their shade, sense, and character. She had not learned to criticise, she only knew how to feel. A new indefinable sensation of joy and hope was deepened within her, and a single concentration of all best influences swelled her bosom. She took off her hat and pricked grass-heads and bluebells in the band, and went on. The intangible presence of God was in her soul, the universal voice of Jesus called her forward. Besides, she was about to penetrate the profoundly interesting anagogue of the Meeting, that for which every seventh day she had heard the bell so mysteriously ring, that to which Obed and his mother devoted so much gravity, awe, and costume, and that concerning which a whole life's prohibition had been upon her. Withal, she remembered the murderer, and directed her first steps to the Jail. She tried to enter the Jail House, but Mr. Shooks drove her away. Then she searched along the fence till she found a crevice in the posts of which the inclosure was made, and through this, on the ground floor of the prison, within the very small aperture that served him for a window, she saw the grim