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rent; but besides these there are foulards, fine a similar cordon of daisies, which ascended. Alpacas, Mohair, and linen. The former are The corsage decolleté was gathered at the bottom very often made with double skirts; but the and sustained above by a cordon of the same latter fabrics are the best for travelling, and flowers. The coiffure was a little chef d'œuvre country or sea-side wear. of grace and simplicity. Fancy the hair undulating, slightly crépés, and rising lightly in three ranks formed by field-daisies mounted on a plait : behind, a Greek knot fixed rather high. Besides the obligatory ornaments of a toilet de bal, it is the fashion to surcharge the forehead, the neck, and ears with splendid parures.

The toilets de bal for the season are composed of the lightest tissues, and their ornamentation looks like the work of fairy needles. I have seen a robe of white crape, with two skirts, the first of which was trimmed with a cordon of fielddaisies over a wide hem. The second skirt had

THE LADIES' PAGE.

INSTRUCTIONS IN NEEDLE-WORK.

In working our patterns for Crochet, Knitting, Netting, &c., we recommend the Boar's Head Cotton of Messrs. Walter Evans and Co., of Derby, in preference to any other.

The Simplest Way of Counting a Foundation Chain which is afterwards to be worked in Set Patterns. Instead of counting the entire length of stitches, which is both troublesome and confusing, count in the number required for a single pattern, and then begin over again. Thus, if each pattern requires twenty-five chains, count so far, and then begin again; this will insure your having the proper number to complete patterns.

KNITTING.

Casting On-Hold the end of cotton between the third and little fingers of the left hand, and let it pass over the thumb and forefinger; bend the latter, and straighten it again, so that in the operation the thread shall be twisted into a loop; now catch the cotton over the little finger of the right hand, letting it pass under the third and second, and over the forefinger; take up a knitting-needle, and insert it in the loop on the forefinger of the left hand; bring the thread round the needle; turn the point of the needle slightly towards you, and tighten the loop while slipping it off the finger; take the needle now in the left hand, holding it lightly between the

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from it; again put the thread round to form a fresh loop, which slip on the left-hand needle, and repeat the process.

Plain Knitting.-Slip the point of the righthand needle in a loop, put the thread around it, and draw it out in a new loop.

Purling. Slip the right-hand needle through a loop in the front of the left-hand one, so that its point is the nearest to you. The thread passes between the two, and is brought round the right-hand one, which is drawn out to form a loop on it. The thread is always brought to the front before purl stitches, unless particular directions to the contrary are given.

Twisted Knitting.-Insert the needle in the stitch to be knitted, at the back of the left-hand one, and, as it were, in the latter half of the loop. Finish the stitch in the usual way.

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Twisted Purling. Insert the right-hand needle in the stitch, not crossing the left-hand one, as is usual, but parallel with it. When the loop is on it, it can return to its usual place, and be finished like any other purled stitch.

To Make Stitches. To make one stitch, merely bring the thread in front before knitting a stitch, as, in order to form the new stitch, it must pass over the needle, thus making one. To make two, three, or more, pass the thread two the needle in addition; once, to make

twice, to increase three, and so on; but, when the succeeding stitch to a made stitch is purled, you must bring the thread in front, and put it once round the needle, to make one stitch.

thumb and second finger, leaving the forefinger free. This needle is kept under the hand; the other rests over the division between the thumb and forefinger of the right hand, and the thumb, lightly pressing against it, holds it in its place. To Take In.-(Decrease). Either knit two as The forefinger has the thread carried from the one, which is marked in receipts as k 2t; or, left hand over the nail of it. Insert the point of slip one, knit one, pass the slip-stitch over the the right-hand needle in the loop of the left-knitted. This is either written in full, or hand one; put the thread round it, and let it decrease 1. When three have thus to be made form a loop; transfer the loop to the left-hand into one, slip one, knit two together, and pass needle, but without withdrawing the other needle the slip over.

To Slip. Take a stitch from the left to the right-hand needle, without knitting.

To Raise a Stitch.-Knit as a stitch the bar of thread between two stitches.

To Join a Round.-Four needles are used in stockings, mittens, gloves, and any other work which is round without being sewed up. Divide the number of stitches to be cast on by three; cast a third on one needle; take the second needle, slip it into the last stitch, and cast on the required number. The same with the third. Then knit two stitches off from the first needle on to the third. The round being thus formed, begin to use the forth needle for knitting.

To Join the Toe of a Sock, &c.--Divide the entire number of stitches, putting half on each of two needles, taking care that all the front ones are on one needle, and the sole on another. Knit one off from each needle as one; repeat; then pass the first over the second. Continue as in ordinary casting off.

To Cast Off.-Knit two stitches; pass the one first knitted over the other; knit another; pass the former over this one. Continue so,

Brioche Stitch.-The number cast on for brioche stitch mustalways be divisible by three

without a remainder. Bring the thread in front, slip one, knit two together. It is worked the same way backwards and forwards. Garter Stitch.-Plain knitting in anything which is in rows, not rounds. The sides appear alike.

Moss Stitch.-Knit one, purl one, alternately. In the next row, let the knitted stitch come over the purled, and vice versa.

To Knit Rapidly and Easily.-Hold the needles as near to the points as possible, and have no more motion in the hands than you can avoid; keep the forefinger of the left hand free to feel the stitches; slide them off the needle, &c. The touch of this finger is so delicate that by using it constantly you will soon be able to knit in the dark.

Ribbed Knitting.-Knit and purl alternately so many stitches as two. In rounds the knitted must always come over the knitted, and puried over purled. But in rows the purled stitch will be done over the knitted, and vice versa. Thus, if you end a row with a purled stitch, that stitch must be knitted at the beginning of the next row to make it right.

UNDER THE PEAR-TR E E.

PART II.

CHAP. IV.

Two years passed, and Swan Day was to all appearance no nearer his return to the land of his birth than when he first trod the deck that bore him away from it. He was still on the first round of the high ladder to fortune. Thus far he had wrought diligently and successfully. He had been sent hither and thither: from Canton to Hong-Kong; from Macao to Ningpo and Shanghai. He was clerk, supercargo, anything that the interest of the Company demanded. He worked with a will. His thoughts were full of tea, silks, and lacquered ware, of exquisite carved ivory and wonderful porcelains, of bamboos, umbrellas, and garden-chairs,-of Hong-Hi, Ching-Ho, and Fi-Fo-Fum.

There were moments, between the despatch of one vessel and the lading of another, when his mind would follow the sun, as it blazed along down out of sight of China, and fast on its way towards the Fox farm,--when an intense long ing seized him to look once again on the shady nest of all his hopes and labours. He hated the life he led. He hated the noisy Tarter women that surrounded him,-aquatic and disgusting

as crawfish,-brown, stupid, and leering. He hated the feline yawling of their music. He hated the yellow water, swarming with boats, and settled with junks. He hated their pagodas, and their hideous effigies of their ancestors, looking like dumb idols. Their bejeweled Buddhas, their incense-lamps, their night and day, were alike odious to him.

Stretched on a bamboo chair, in an interval of labour, and when the intense heat brought comparative stillness, before his closed eyes came often up his home among the New-Hampshire hills. He thought of his dead mother in the burying-ground, and the slate stones standing in the desolate grass. Then his thoughts ran eagerly back to the Fox farm, and the sweet, lonely figure that stood watching his return under the pear-tree,-the warm kiss of happy meeting, life opening fair, and a long vista through which the sunlight peeped all the more brightly for the shadowing trees.

Then over the farm, broad and bountiful, scanning every detail of the large red house, the great barns and sheds, the flocks of turkeys, and the geese, kept for feathers, and not dreamed of for eating. (Our Puritan fathers held neither to Christmas nor Christmas goose). Through

the parth up by the well-sweep, where the mosscovered bucket hangs dripping with the purest of water. Beyond the corn-barn to the butternut-trees, by this time, they have dropped their rich, oily fruit; and the chestnut burrs, split open, and laying on the sunny ground. Then round to the house again, where the slant October sun shines in at the hospitable open door, where the little wheel burrs contentedly, and the loom goes flap-flap, as the strong arm of Cely Temple presses the cloth together, and throws the shuttle past, like lightning: stout cloth for choppers and ploughmen comes out of that loom!

In all his peepings at the interior of the house, one figure has accompanied him, beautified and glorified the place; so that, whether he looks into the buttery, where fair, round cheeses fill the shelves, or wanders up the broad stairs with wide landings to the "peacock chamber," he seems to himself always to be going over a temple of sweet and sacred recollections. Into the peacock chamber, therefore, his soul may wander, where the walls are sparsely decked with black-and white sketches, ill displaying the glorious plumage of the bird, and, like all old pictures, very brown,-even to the four-posted bed, whitely dressed, and heaped to a height that would defy "the true princess" to feel a pea through it, and the white toilet-table, neatly ornamented with a holder and a pair of scissors, both sacred from common usage. Asparagus in the chimney, with scarlet berries. General Washington, very dingy and respectable, over the fireplace; and two small circular frames, inclosing the Colonel and his wife in profile. The likenesses are nearly exact, and the two noses face each other as if in an argument. Dutch tiles are set round the fireplace, of odd Scripture scenes, common in design and coarse in execution. Into the "sqnare room" below, where the originals of the black profiles sit and smoke their pipes, Swan does not care to venture. But some day, he will show the Colonel!

Many days these thoughts came to Swan. Months, alas, years, they came, but few and far between. The five thousand dollars that was to have been the summit was soon only the footstool of his ambition. He became partner, and then head of a house having commercial relations with half the world. His habits assimilated themselves to the country about him, and the cool, green pictures of his mountainhome ceased to float before his sleeping eyes or soothe his waking fancies.

His busy life left him little opportunity for reading. But he took in much knowledge at first-hand by observation, which was perhaps better; and as he hit against all sorts of minds, he became in time somewhat reflective and philosophical. Through daily view of the yellow water, and perhaps the glare of the bright sun on it, or the sight of so much nankeen cloth, or the yellow faces about him, perhaps,-or what ever the cause or causes,-Swan certainly altered in his personal appearance, as the years

went by. The handsome erect youth, lithe and active, with keen features and brilliant eyes, ruddy lips and clear oval face, was gradually fading and transforming into something quite different. The brilliant eyes became sleepy, and, from a habit of narrowing the lids over them, possibly to shut out the bright sun, receded more and more beyond the full and flaccid cheeks, and even contracted a Mongolian curve at the outer corners.

One May morning Swan sat alone in his Chinese-furnished room, luxuriously appointed, as became him, on his silk, shaded ottoman, and dreamily fanned himself. His dreams were of nothing more than what occupied him waking. If he glanced upward, he would see the delicate silk curtains at the window, and the mirrors of polished steel between the carved ivory lattices. Great porcelain vases, such as are never seen here, were disposed about the room, and jars of flowers of strange hues stood on mats of yellow wool. Furniture inlaid with ivory, mother-ofpearl, and coral decked the apartment, and a small, rich table, held an exquisite tea-set. Swan had just been drinking from it, and the room was full of the fragrance. He toyed with the tea cup, and half dozed. Then, rousing himself, he put fresh tea from the canister into the cup, and poured boiling water over it from the mouth of the fantastic dragon. Covering the cup, he dallied languidly with the delicious beverage, and with the half-thoughts, halfmusings, that came with the dreamy indolence of the weather. Was it, indeed, ten years—ten nay, fifteen years, that he had lived this Chinalife?

The door swung softly open, and a servant brought a note, and stood waiting for him to read it.

Swan glanced disdainfully at the object, which he could never quite consider humanat his white and blue petticoats, and his effeminate face, so sleepy and so mindless, as if he expected him to turn into a plate or sugar-bowl, or begin flying in the air across some porcelain river, and alighting on the pinnacle of a pagoda. "Hong man, he outside," said the servant. "Show him in, you stupid fool!" said the master, and get out of the room with yourself!"

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CHAP. V.

The Hong merchant's intelligence proved at once to Swan Day the absolute necessity of his return to America to protect the interests of the Company in Boston. With the promptitude which had thus far been one of the chief elements of his success, he lost not a moment in (so to speak) changing his skin, for the new purpose of his existence.

It seemed as if with the resumption of the dress of his native country (albeit of torrid texture still, since a chocolate silk coat, embroidered waistcoat, and trousers of dark satin, speak to a modern ear of fashions as remote as

China), Swan resumed many of the habits and feelings therewith connected. With the flowing flowered robes he cast off for ever the world to which it belonged, and his pulse beat rapidly and joyously as the sails filled with the breeze that bore him away. He gazed with a disdainful pleasure at the receding shore, and closed his eyes to turn his back for ever on the Chu Sins and Wu-Wangs-to let the Hang dynasty go hang-to shut out from all bnt future fireside tales the thought of varnish-trees, soap-| trees, tallow-trees, wax-trees, and litchi-nevermore to look on the land of the rhinoceros, the camel, the elephant, and the ape-on the girls with thick, protuberant lips, copper skins, and lanky black hair-on the corpulent gentry, with their long talons, and madams tottering on their hoofs, reminding him constantly of the animal kingdom, as figured to imagination in childhood, of the rat that wanted his long tail again, or of the horse that will never wiu a race, -on the land of lanterns and lying, of silver pheasants and-of scamps.

The faster the good ship sailed, the stronger the east-wind blew, the swifter ran the life-current in the veins of the returning exile,-frieud, countryman, lover.

As the vessel neared the coast of Massachusetts, and the land-breeze brought to his eager nostrils the odours of his native orchards, or the aromatic fragrance of the pine, and the indescribable impression, on all his senses, of home, the fresh love of country rushed purely through his veins, bubbled warmly about the place where his heart used to beat, and rose to his brain in soft, sweet imaginations. Vivid pictures of past and future identical in all their essential features, swam before his closed eyes, languid now from excess of pleasure. Again and again he drew in the breath of home, and felt it sweeter than the gales from the Spice Islands or odours from Araby the Blest. Hovering before his fancy, came sweet eyes, full of bewildering light, half-reproachful, half-sad, and all-bewitching; a form of such exquisite grace that he wondered not it swam and undulated before him; over all, the rose-hue of youth, and the smooth, sweet charm of lip and hand that memory brought him, in that last timid caress under the pear-tree after sunset.

As soon as he could possibly so arrange his affairs in Boston as to admit of his taking a journey to Walton, Swan determined to do so. But affairs will not always consent to an arrangement; and although he exerted himself to gain a week's leisure, it was not till the Indian summer was past that he took his place in the stage-coach which plied between Boston and Walton.

How very short seemed the time since he was last on this road! Yet how much had things changed! Fifteen years! Was it possible he had been gone so long? How rapidly they had gone ov er maelf! He felt scarcely a day older.

When the driver whipped up his modest team to an animated trot before the Eagle Hotel in Walton, Swan felt as if he must have been in a dream only, and had just now awakened. Walton was one of those New-Hampshire towns, of which there came afterwards to be many, which were said to be good to go from;" accordingly, everybody had gone everywhere, except the old inhabitants and the children. All the youths had gone towards "the pleasant Ohio, to settle on its banks;" and such maidens as had courage to face a pioneer settlement followed their chosen lords, while the less enterprising were fain to stay at home and bewail their singlehood. All business was necessarily stagnant, and all the improvements, architectural or otherwise, which had marked the route on which Swan had come, now seemed suddenly to have ceased. He might have thought Walton the Enchanted Palace, and himself the Fairy Prince that was to waken to life and love the Sleeping Beauty.

How unchanged was everything! The store where he used to sell crockery and pins,-the great elm-tree in front of it,-the old red tavern on the hill, where they had the Thanksgiving ball, the houses, from one end of the street to the other, all just as when he left: he might hare found his way in the dark to every one of them.

At the Eagle Tavern the same men sat on the stoop, with chairs tilted back, smoking. A man in the bar-room was mixing flip or gin-sling for two others, who were playing checkers. Tafthimself stood at the door, somewhat changed, indeed, though he was always fat, but with the same ready smile as ever.

Swan's first touch of surprise was that Taft did not recognize him-him whom he used to see every day of his life! That was strange ! It looked as if time told on Taft's faculties a little.

Wrapping his travelling-cloak about him Swan asked to be shown directly into his room, and, in his anxiety to avoid being recognized, ordered a light supper to be sent up to him. First of all he wanted to see Dorcas, to settle affairs with Colonel Fox, and to feel established. Until then he cared not to see or talk with his old acquaintances. It would be time enough afterwards to take them by the hand-to employ them, perhaps. And as it takes almost no time to think, before he was half way up the stairs, Swan Day had got as far as the erection of a superb country-seat on the hill where the old Cobb house stood, and of employing a dozen smart young carpenters and masons of his acquaintance in the village. The garden should have a pagoda in it; and one room in the house should be called the "China room," and should be furnished exclusively with Chinese tables and chairs; and he would have a brilliant lantern fete, and Here he reached the top-stair and the little maid pointed to his room curtsied and ran away.

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Swan dropped his cloak, snuffed the candle,

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who declarés he has never for an instant lost his consciousness, while the bystanders have witnessed the dead fall, and taken note of the long interval-so this sojourner of fifteen years in strange lands felt the returning pulse of youth, without thought of the lapsing time that bridges over all gulfs of emotion, however deep.

and, sitting down before the pleasant wood-fire, that had been hastily lighted, proceeded to make his own tea, by a new invention for travellers. As people are not changed so quickly as they expect and intend to be by circumstances, it came to pass that Swan Day's plans for elegant expenditure in his native town soon relapsed, perhaps under the influence of the In fact, that part of his nature which had been Chinese herb, into old channels and plans for in most violent action fifteen years before had acquisition. The habit of years was a little too been lying as torpid under Indian suns as if strong for him to turn short round and pour it had been dead indeed; and his sense of reout what he had been for so many years garner- turning vitality was mixed with curious specuing in. Rather, perhaps, keep in the tread-milllations about his own sensations. of business awhile longer, and then be the nabob in earnest. At present, who knew what these mutterings in the political atmosphere portended? A war with England seemed inevitable, and that at no distant period. It might be better to retire on a limited certainty; but then there was also the manful struggle for a splendid possibility.

Å neat-handed maid brought in a tray, with the light supper he had ordered.

He dropped the pen, and placed his feet on the top of the high stuffed easy-chair which adorned the room. This inverted personal condition relieved his mystification somewhat, or perhaps brought his whole nature more into harmony.

"Dorcas!-hm! hm!-fifteen years! so it is!-ah! she must be sadly changed indeed! At thirty a woman is no longer a wood-nymph. Even more than thirty she must be."

The sight of four kinds of pies, with cold He removed his feet from their elevation, and turkey and apple-sauce, brought the Fox farm carefully arranged a different scaffolding out of and its inhabitants more vividly to his mind the materials before him, by placing a cricket than anything else he had seen. Pumpkin of on the table, and his feet on the cricket. To do the yellowest, custard of the richest, apple of this effectually and properly required the rethe spiciest, and mince that was one mass of ap-moval of the four pies, and the displacement of petizing dainty, filled the room with the flavor the cold turkey. of bygone memories. Every sense responded to them. The fifteen years that had hung like a curtain of mist before him suddenly lifted, and he saw the view beyond, broad, bountiful, and cheery, under the sunshine of love, hope, and plenty. He closed his eyes, and the flavour filled his soul, as sweet music makes the lover faint with happiness.

He took out his writing-materials, and wrote:

“MY DEAREST, SWEETEST DORCAS,-Never for one instant has the thought of you left my

heart, since"

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It will be perceived that Swan had improved in rhetoric, since the day he parted from his lady-love. Still he could not satisfy himself in a letter. In short, he felt that expression outran the reality, however modestly and moderately chosen. Some vividness, some fervency, he must have, of course. But how in the world to get up the requisite definition even to the words he could conscientiously use? The second attempt followed the first.

Swan Day is not the first man who has found himself mistaken in matters of importance. In his return to his native country, and the scenes of his early life, he had taken for granted the evergreen condition of his sentiments. Like the reviving patient in epilepsy,

But Swan was mentally removing far greater and more serious difficulties. By the time he had asked himself one or two questions, and had answered them, such as, "Whether, all the conditions being changed, I am to be held to my promise?" and the like, he had placed one foot carefully up. Then, before conscience had time to trip him up, the other foot followed, and he found himself firmly posted.

"I will write a note to-morrow-put it into the post-office- No, that won't do; in these places, nobody goes to the post-office once a

week-I'll send a note to the house."

Here he warmed up.

"A note, asking her to meet me under the great pear-tree, as we met-It is, by Jove! just fifteen years to-morrow night since I left Walton! That's good! it will help on some"

tions by coming for the relics of the supper; The little maid here interrupted his meditaand Swan, weary with unwonted thought, dropped the paper curtains, and plunged, body and soul, into fifty pounds of live-geese feathers.

CHAP. VI.

The great clock in the dining-room whirred out twelve strokes before Swan opened his eyes. As soon as the eyes took in the principal features of the apartment, which process his mental preoccupation had hindered the night before, he was as much at home as if he had never left Walton.

The great beam across the low room, the

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