ful in the cotillion, who troubled and amused society by his sandy and sad-hued beard and mustachios. Yet our gentleman, flaunting at levees, and flashing under the candelabras at great routs, had a most singular complacency growing out of this arrangement of his scathed hair, combined with his cast of features. He prided himself upon what he believed to be his resemblance to our Saviour!-This is no less true than it was childish and blasphemous. I must say I looked upon him with pity—but I thought of the moral. Can the tendency of these things to vitiate and render taste ridiculous by its very extravagance, and the moral sense a dead letter by the very insanity of such presumptions, be any longer doubted in an age and country that witness such exhibitions of mind and matter!

Another condition is important here-that of mustachios in the daily affairs of life. In a case of soup or soda-water, what an interference! Make the best of it, it must come at last to biting your own hair off. This is a melancholy consequence, all will admit. It is worse than biting nails-so often considered, with perfect justice, as evidence of lost equanimity and bad passions. So far, then, the cultivation of this inhuman exercise must be set down as of evil tendency, questionless--leading as it does to the indulgence of a biting and supercilious disposition, from the easy satisfaction of the first, afforded by its length, and the wonderful expression which is given to the second, from the fierce curling of it in a moment of heat. It seems a fair conclusion, then, that mustachios are to be regarded as a sort of moral beacon, hung out on the lip of the wearer, and, so they be red, what proof are they of what a temper!

But let us pass down a moment from mustachios to whiskers. I have no idea that they who envelope their chins in this way expect other or better things of men and women than downright laughterand I doubt if they even think of keeping their countenances before their mirrors. Why, I have known one of these fellows to be followed through a village as a "sight." He was passing the school-house as the boys were let out; and the little urchins ran before him and round him-and at his side-and turned about and grinned and shouted, as they would about a caravan. There was no way for it but to run; and though he frightened the nearest by turning full upon them with all his force, he found no peace till he got into his room at the tavern.

Whiskers are undoubtedly good for winter wear. They may be used as a boa. To smooth-faced and intelligent men-those patient spirits that even find a pleasure in shaving-it will ever prove such, in a double sense. The sadness of that pun I would acknowledge in passing but a full forgiveness of it will be found, I doubt, in the consciousness which all must feel, that it is not half so bad as the hair which occasioned it.

Time was-and almost all of us can remember it-when whis

kers were suffered to be born and die in a reasonable spareness and tenuity. Even they who went to war did not entrench more than an inch or so upon the curvation of the skin. They did not suppose that so much success in fight depended upon the mere expression of fierceness, or that bravery was to be so much measured by the quantity of matted and superfluous hair, a man was able to maintain under his ear and lower maxillary. Time was, when an inch of whisker was held to be extravagance, so it encroached upon the cheek; and if any "extra allowance" was tolerated, it was in outright protrusion of the material-when it was not uncommon to find it standing forth like studding sails on either side the accompanying countenance of the proprietor. But now, mark you the essential difference! It presents you with a case of continued trespass upon the acknowledged territory of the beard proper. It is a capital representation of the "unknown quantity," and a perpetual scout of the heretofore sensible doctrine of a quantum sufficit.

Whiskers are now of no particular length. In the language of the law, they are "laid with a continuando. It is a case of neck or nothing with them-and they envelope the whole. If you look upon that pretty outline of the exquisite Count D'Orsay in a late Frazer, you will see how copiously they can cushion a chin, and what is the climax of hair-arrangement in that quarter, among the literati of whiskers.

I have seen those impure appendages sported on the bench. This was unpardonable. It was bad enough at the bar-and even there they are pestilent accompaniments for counsel. There is no gentlemanly managing of a jury with them. Men are not open to reason or pathos that might issue from any part of a face thus cultivated. They continually-and for good reason-suspect him who talks to them in a mask. But to carry whiskers-I mean these enormous outriggers of the family-so much more ample than is necessary to swear by-up to the tribunal, is unbecoming the judge, as it is unfortunate for the woolsack. What would men have us think? Do they mean to enforce decisions by the ferocity of their countenances?-to make us fear instead of honor them? Or would they, wherever they may be, have us understand that their strength, like his of old, lies in their hair? Verily, what Sampsons have we here? Their power, it is evident, is a quality most mortifyingly external. You never need fear about it as you sometimes do of a humor-it will never strike in! Finally, it may be set down as a perfectly just conclusion, that the proprietors of overgrown whiskers are generally gentlemen who have failed in all other speculations, and are out of linen. They cannot raise the wind as easily as they can their hair—and all the wild land they can afford to dip into lies on their chins. They have become completely cramped in credit, and cannot even have trust for their dickies.

But it would be idle, and, according to the moral standard of the times, unphilosophical, to bring out and amplify upon an evil, and thus leave it, without suggesting some cure-recommending some measures that may operate in the way of eradication. For myself, I have thought upon the subject enough to convince me that there is no doing any thing with it by reasoning. Logic can hold no way with mustachios; and the best conclusion you can arrive at against them is a perfect enthymeme to whiskers. Whatever is done to root out this overshadowing evil must be done per force. There must be a material, physical, attack. The barber must be anticipated.

I have entertained various views upon the best method of reform; but none has struck me as so feasible at once, and so forcible, as that which was suggested by a scene I witnessed the other day between the proprietor of two whiskers of size immeasurable and incredible, and a Vermont pedlar. They stood in the shadow of the wall, in one of the small streets, just where it turns out of the great thoroughfare of the city. Here they chaffered-and the subject of bargain was this unconscious harvest of hair. The dealer in notions would purchase the whiskers, for reasons which he had rendered, and the difficulty seemed to grow out of the question of value. The fellow would get them for a trifle. But not so-the gentleman held them to be of no small charge. They were things of price. They were his stock in trade. Both grew warm upon their terms-and, at the moment I was passing, the dispute was probably at the highest. Loitering, as I usually do, I naturally caught a word or two of the subject matter. As naturally I drew up. I was amused at the tenacity of each contractor, and felt, for the first time, that there may be a good deal of meaning among disputants, in the "difference of a hair." The pedlar, however, at length seemed to carry his point. He uttered something in a low voice to his Don Ferolo, which operated like a charm or magnetismpointed to his pack, and a pair of scissors which he drew half out of his waistcoat pocket, and straightway he and Whiskerandos moved off, both parties apparently well satisfied with the conclu sion to which they had come. I was confident there had been a sale.

A thought immediately struck me. These excrescences might become a useful material, for I felt sure, in the case I had just wit nessed, they would be worked up into something. Trust a New England pedlar for that! And thus my admiration resulted.

I would recommend, thought I, a leaving of the whole matter to the brotherhood of cabinet-makers. I would commend the craft collectively, upon some sunny day, to a general and well concerted onşet upon all whiskers of an unchristian size that may then darken the great promenades of cities. I would have them go forth with

shears, and in the house or by the way, in business or out of it, wherever they may take them, despoil all cheeks and chins of every extravagant hair. I would have them catch them as so many nuisances, which the age is getting a bad name to put up with. They should abate them as so many monsters that only frighten simple women, confound plain people from the country, and keep alive the hooting generation of bad boys. Let them to the trial. Let the whole company out upon them. What a reaping they would have then! What a revenue of stuffing for sofas and stools! How cheap would they get the material for their trade. How much better bargains would they naturally make than the pedlar! They should have a clear way. I would have them liable to no action for trespass upon real property, and subject to no suit for assault and battery. Whiskers should thus be left to the tender mercies of a speculating craft, let loose upon their superabundance; the same sofas and stools should become the sepulchre of th's extraneous hair, and thus the whole matter should be literally put under our feet.

As to the scene of the shearing, the delight it would afford to those who are in the morning of their mustachios, or the noviciate of their whiskers, would be mingled with just enough of warning and rebuke to make the memory lasting; while it would impart a perfect ecstacy to those good citizens and grave gentlemen who are accustomed to shave daily.

If the sensible plan which I have here proposed should prove abortive, I see no other resort than leaving the whole thing to the ladies. If they cannot excommunicate such evils from the republic, we may as well give up; and if they will not, we may as well have funeral services over our departed delicacy. To say nothing of the taste of our beautiful creatures who would encourage these deformities upon the face of society, I should fear something for their affections. They would naturally love the sultan better than their lords; and all their tenderness would be mere moonshine compared with the attractions of any chance Turk who may whisk his beard through society.

It is getting

But it is time to "pin up the hair" of my discourse. longer than the sad subject it deals with. I repeat that, as a last resort, woman holds the power of reform. The ladies have the authority of life and death over every forth-putting whisker and mustachios in community. They may frown it out of existence, even as the page's beard, in Van Artavelde, was frightened in. Let them give its wearer the go-by at their parties-banish him from balls-refuse him at the dance, should he get to one, and cut him in every way conceivable, until, on his part, he consents to cut, forever, the sad superfluity of his hair.

CHILDHOOD'S TWILIGHT.

Why do I love the hour of rest?
Is it because the lingering light
Is glorious in the ruddy west,

And winds are soft, and stars are bright?

Is it because I love to mark

The full red moon rise o'er the hill,

To watch the fire-fly's fitful spark,

And feel the cool soft dews distil?

Is it because my tasks are said,

My eyelids with deep sleep oppressed,
And I would lay my weary head
Upon its pillow soft to rest?

Oh no! a holier charm than these
Hallows the twilight hour to me,
And makes me love the evening breeze,
And joy the setting sun to see.

It is that then my mother speaks

Of prayer, and Heaven, and God on high,

To make me pious gently seeks,

And fit me even in youth to die.

And when one happy hour is flown,
She quits her little worshipper,
With kiss and blessing left alone
In my own heart to pray for her.

Oh! happy is the day's last hour,

The hour of holy talk and pray'r, When calin and pious thoughts have pow'r, And God seems floating in the air!