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"He, Madam-how should you know the sitter was a he?"

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"Oh I knew the step! "Knew the step, Madam! Here was a pretty kettle of fish! For a moment the painter believed they had tumbled head-first into the fifth act, and spoiled the catastrophe; but the next he was reassured by the lady's adding, that she knew it was a man's step, and that the person, whoever it was, happened to have a slight creak in his shoes, and was trying to step softly. And do you know, she added, playfully touching Mr. Sully on the arm, do you know that I was dying to know who it was, and was just running to the front window to look out, when

"Bless my soul, Madam!"

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"Oh, but I did'nt, though! I was only thinking how pleasant it would be and then no, no-do as you would be done by, says I to myself; how should you like to be served so? It would have been altogether too spiteful, would'nt it, Mr. Sully? No, no I would'nt have done it for the world." "I would'nt have had you do it for the world, Madam," said the painter, laying his hand upon his heart with unspeakable solemnity. "Just imagine how you would have felt, Madam, on looking up at the window as you left the door, to find a pair of strange eyes watching you through the blinds, or peeping through the curtains - your husband's, for example!!"

“Oh lud, Mr. Sully-don't! don't! I should have dropped down upon the spot, I'm sure I should! But just allow me to look at the cast of the drapery, as you call it, once more -passing him as she spoke, and running to the door of the study.

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"Not for your life, madam! cried Sully, hurrying past her, and contriving to place himself in such a position that she couldn't see her husband's picture, though it was actually upon the wall, and almost fronting her as she opened the door and was about to enter. "Not for your life, madam! - the picture is finished - the shawl is magnificent, upon my word it is the finest bit of drapery I ever painted in my life-and, in short, madam," drawing the door to with a gentle violence, turning the key and slipping it into his pocket as he continued every minute is precious now. It would be such a pity for you to be seen here"

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"You are right, Mr. Sully, you are right, and I will go; but first let me tell you what I have done. I declare I can't help laughing! at breakfast this morning, what should my dear good husband do, but propose a ride over to Germantown this very afternoon ride I detest at this season of the year; he has got some business over there, it seems, and is willing to take me with him was ever anything so lucky? and then the weatherbad enough to keep us at home, nor pleasant

-a

-not

enough to justify so long a ride. Yet we are to return late - upon my word, when it came to that, I could hardly keep my countenance, and when I told him I had no objection to the night air, and thought on the whole it might do me good there was the strangest look in his eyes for a moment, you - just as if he thought I was laughing at him ha, ha, ha!

ever saw

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What an escape! thought poor Sully, as the lady disappeared. "So far so good!

- fanning himself with a large crayon sketch, and dropping into a chair all out of breath; and then turning to the two portraits, who were looking at each other for all the world, as if they were both in the plot, he added"As I live, my excellent friends, I should not be very much surprised to find that you have both been fooling me from the first. Your eyes look like it — and the smile about your mouths. Well, well-courage - let him laugh that wins! The best way, and the only way left, indeed, is to carry the joke through."

That afternoon, by four o'clock, the two portraits were hung up, and all the windows darkened, except one that furnished a favorable light; and all the doors were shut, and nobody on earth knew a syllable of what had been done not even the servants so beautifully managed was the affair. Under pretence of looking at a fine landscape, Sully had been admitted by the housekeeper-and having satisfied himself, and called in a student to enjoy it with him, they were left alone together, and went away together, just as they came nobody being the wiser.

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My dear," said the wife next morning, "what are you up so early for?"

66 Have you forgotten, my love? I couldn't sleep for my life. This is the twenty-fifth."

"So it is, I declare, and that accounts for it. I have been fidgetting this last hour, ever since daylight, indeed. I could n't help wondering what was the matter with me. tried, and tried, and tried, but all to no purpose; I could not get to sleep again."

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lection that Sully was a man to be depended
upon, under all circumstances, and of course
that he should find everything in apple-pie
order, and had nothing to fear."How odd!"
thought he, "after having been awake so
long, she didn't happen to get up and by
some chance or other drop into the room be-
low, and spoil the joke forever!" Poor
man! How little did he suspect the truth!
Husband and wife both, had been awake ever
since long before day-light-each pretending
to be asleep, and waiting for an opportunity
to steal away -
or listening each to the
other's breathing, in the hope that such ex-
traordinary restlessness might end at last in
a comfortable nap.

Well they descended the stairs together, and the husband was just putting out his hand to touch the handle of the door-when

lo and behold! - his wife stopped as if she too had something to say. - and then smiled and then both looked foolish - and then the husband, being able to stand it no longer, flung open the door and begged her to walk in!

As he moved away, she entered, trembling from head to foot. Both looked up - the wife screamed! - and the husband was all aghast! "My dear!" said he and then he stopped short, overwhelmned with aston

ishment and perplexity. "Oh dear!" an-
swered the wife, and then she came to a full
stop, and both stood staring at the two pic-
tures and rubbing their eyes, very much as if
to satisfy themselves that they were broad
awake.

Well, and what then?
Why then
my story is finished.
What a scene for the stage!

Yes-and what a lesson to people who go through the world, gathering always and never scattering; reaping where they have not sowed and literally spunging their entertainment out of all the rest of the world, without shame or compunction! Are there not millions of stories like this afloat in the memories of people who never think of bringing them out, or of acknowledging their existence by word or sign. To all such, allow me to say, shame on you! for a pack of mumchances. What on earth are you good for? Think you that magazine writing. stage-coach conversation is to be made up of axioms and apothegms, of essays and homilies? No. Both should be sprightly and natural, and ever changing-mutable as the leaves of autumn playing in the sunshine, or the chiming sea, when the blue waves are flashing with perpetual evolution.

- or

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I thought she was wayward-inconstant in part,

But thought not the weakness e'er reached to her heart;
'Twas a lightness of mood which but tempted a lover
The more real way to that heart to discover.

What changeful seemed then, was the play of the wave,
Which veileth the depth of the firm ocean cave;

I cared not how fitful that light wave might flow,

I would dive for the pearl of affection below.

I won it! methought, and now welcome the strife,
The burthen, the toil, the worst struggles of life;
Come trouble- come sorrow come pain and despair,
We divide ills, that cach for the other would bear!

I believed I could SWEAR there was that in her breast,
That soul of wild feeling, which needs but the test,
To leap like a falchion - bright, glowing, and true,
To the hand which its worth and its temper best knew.

And what was the struggle which tested love's power?
What fortune, so soon, could bring trial's dark hour?
Did some shadow of evil first make her heart quail ?
Or the WORST prove at once that her truth could ne'er fail?

I painted it sternly, the lot she might share!

I took from LovE's wing all the gloss it may bear;

I told her how often his comrade is CARE !

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THE PHARISEE AND THE BARBER.

BY N. P. WILLIS.

"Pour dire les choses en fidèle historien."

SHEAFE LANE, in Boston, is an almost unmentionable and plebeian thoroughfare, between two very mentionable and patrician streets. It is mainly used by bakers, butchers, urchins going to school, and clerks carrying home parcels — in short, by those who care less for the beauty of the road than for economy of time and shoe-leather. If you please, it is a shabby hole. Children are born there, however, and people die and marry there, and are happy and sad there, and the great events of life, more important than our liking or disliking of Sheafe Lane, take place in it continually. It used not to be a very savory place. Yet it has an indirect share of such glory as attaches to the birth-places of men above the common. The (present) great light of the Unitarian Church was born at one end of Sheafe Lane, and one of the most accomplished merchant-gentlemen in the gay world of New York was born at the other. And in the old Haymarket (a kind of cul de sac, buried in the side of Sheafe Lane,) stood the dusty lists of the chivalric old Roulstone, a gallant horseman, who in other days would have been a knight of noble devoir, though in the degeneracy of a Yankee lustrum, he devoted his soldierly abilities to the teaching of young ladies how to ride.

Are you in Sheafe Lane (as the magnetisers inquire.) Please to step back twenty odd years, and take the hand of a lad with a rosy face, (ourself-for we lived in Sheafe Lane twenty-odd years ago,) and come to a small house, dingy yellow with a white gate. The yard is below the level of the street. Mind the step.

The family are at breakfast in the small parlor fronting on the street. But come up this dark staircase, to the bed-room over the parlor a very neat room, plainly furnished; and the windows are curtained, and there is one large easy chair, and a stand with a Bible open upon it. In the bed lies an old man of seventy, deaf, nearly blind, and bed-ridden.

We have now shown you what comes out of the shadows to us, when we remember the circumstances we are about to body forth in a sketch, for it can scarcely be called a story.

It wanted an hour to noon. The Boylston clock struck eleven, and close on the heel of

the last stroke followed the tap of the barber's knuckle on the door of the yellow house in Sheafe Lane. Before answering to the rap, the maid-of-all-work filled a tin can from the simmering kettle, and surveyed herself in a three-cornered bit of looking-glass, fastened on a pane of the kitchen window; then, with a very soft and sweet "good morning" to Rosier, the barber, she led the way to the old man's room.

"He looks worse to-day," said the barber, as the skinny hand of the old man crept up tremblingly to his face, conscious of the daily office about to be performed for him. They think so below stairs," said Harriet, and one of the church is coming to pray with him to-night. Shall I raise him

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up now?"

The barber nodded, and the girl seated herself near the pillow, and lifting the old man, drew him upon her breast, and, as the operation went rather lingeringly on, the two chatted together very earnestly.

Rosier was a youth of about twenty-one, talkative and caressing, as all barbers are; and what with his curly hair and ready smile, and the smell of soap that seemed to be one of his natural properties, he was a man to be thought of over a kitchen fire. Besides he was thriving in his trade, and not a bad match. All of which was duly considered by the family with which Harriet lived, for they loved the poor girl.

Poor girl, I say. But she was not poor,

at least if it be true that as a woman thinketh so is she. Most people would have described her as a romantic girl. And so she was, but without deserving a breath of the ridicule commonly attached to the word. She was uneducated, too, if any child of New England can be called uneducated. Beyond school-books and the Bible, she had read nothing but the Scottish Chiefs, and this novel was to her what the works of God are to others. It could never become familiar. It must be the gate of dream-land; what the moon is to a poet, what a grove is to a man of reverie, what sunshine is to all the world. And she mentioned it as seldom as people praise sunshine, and lived in it as unconsciously.

Harriet had never before been out to service. She was a farmer's daughter, new

from the country. If she was not ignorant of the degradation of her condition in life, she forgot it habitually. A cheerful and thoughtful smile was perpetually on her lips, and the hardships of her daily routine were encountered as things of course, as clouds in the sky, as pebbles in the inevitable path. Her attention seemed to belong to her body, but her consciousness only to her imagination. In her voice and eyes there was no touch or taint of her laborious servitude, and if she had suddenly been "made a lady, there would have been nothing but her hard hands to redeem from her low condition. Then, hard-working creature as she was, she was touchingly beautiful. A coarse eye would have passed her without notice, perhaps, but a painter would not. She was of a fragile shape, and had a slight stoop, but her head was small and exquisitely moulded, and her slender neck, round, graceful, and polished, was set upon her shoulders with the fluent grace of a bird's. Her hair was profuse, and of a tinge almost yellow in the sun, but her eyes were of a blue, deep almost to blackness, and her heavy eyelashes darkened them still more deeply. She had the least possible color in her cheeks. Her features were soft and unmarked, and expressed delicacy and repose, though her nostrils were capable of dilating with an energy of expression that seemed wholly foreign to her character.

Rosier had first seen Harriet when called in to the old man, six months before, and they were now supposed by the family to be engaged lovers, waiting only for a little more sunshine on the barber's fortune. Meantime they saw each other at least half an hour every morning, and commonly passed their evenings together, and the girl seemed very tranquilly happy in her prospect of marriage.

At four o'clock on the afternoon of the day before mentioned, Mr. Flint was to make a spiritual visit to to the old man. Let us first introduce him to the reader.

Mr. Asa Flint was a bachelor of about forty-five, and an "active member" of a church famed for its zeal. He was a tall man, with a little bend in his back, and commonly walked with his eyes upon the ground, like one intent on meditation. His complexion was sallow, and his eyes dark and deeply set, but by dint of good teeth, and a little "wintry redness in his cheek," he was goodlooking enough for all his ends. He dressed always in black, of course, as all religious men must, and wore shoes with black stockings the year round. In his worldly condition, Mr. Flint had always been prospered. He spent five hundred dollars a year in his personal expenses, and made five thousand in his business, and subscribed, say two hundred dollars a year to such societies as printed the name of the donors. Mr. Flint had no

worldly acquaintances. He lived in a pious boarding-house, and sold all his goods to members of the country churches in communion with his own. He loved the brethren," for he wished for converse with no one who did not see heaven and the church at his back himself in the foreground, and the other two accessories in the perspective. Piety apart, he had found out at twenty-five, that, as a sinner, he would pass through the world simply Asa Flint-as a saint, he would be Asa Flint plus eternity and a large congregation. He was a shrewd man, and chose the better part. Also, he remembered, sin is more expensive than sanctity.

At four o'clock Mr. Flint knocked at the door. At the same hour there was a maternal prayer-meeting at the vestry, and of course it was to be numbered among his petty trials that he must find the mistress of the house absent from home. He walked up stairs, and after a look into the room of the sick man, despatched the lad who had opened the door for him, to request the "help" of the family to be present at the devotions.

Harriet had rather a pleasing recollection of Mr. Flint. He had offered her his arm, a week before, in coming out from a conference meeting, and had "presumed that she was a young lady on a visit" to the mistress! She arranged her 'kerchief and took the kettle off the fire.

Mr. Flint was standing by the bedside with folded hands. The old man lay looking at him with a kind of uneasy terror in his face, which changed, as Harriet entered, to a smile of relief. She retired modestly to the foot of the bed, and, hidden by the curtain, open only at the side, she waited the commencement of the prayer.

“Kneel there, little boy!" said Mr. Flint, pointing to a chair on the other side of the light-stand," and you, my dear, kneel here by me! Let us pray!"

Harriet had dropped upon her knees near the corner of the bed, and Mr. Flint dropped upon his, on the other side of the post, so that after raising his hands in the first adjuration, they descended gradually, and quite naturally upon the folded hands of his neighbor and there they remained. She dared not withdraw them, but as his body rocked to and fro in his devout exercise, she drew back her head to avoid coming into farther contact, and escaped with only his breath upon her temples.

It was a very eloquent prayer. Mr. Flint's voice, in a worldly man, would have been called insinuating, but its kind of covert sweetness, low and soft, seemed, in a prayer, only the subdued monotony of reverence and devotion. But it won upon the ear all the same. He began with a repetition of all the most sublime ascriptions of the psalmist, filling the room, it appeared to Har

She

riet, with a superhuman presence. trembled to be so near him with his words of awe. Gradually he took up the more affecting and tender passages of Scripture, and drew the tears into her eyes with the pathos of his tone and the touching images he wove together. His hand grew moist upon hers, and he leaned closer to her. He began after a short pause, to pray for her especially that her remarkable beauty might not be a snare to her that her dove-like eyes might beam only on the saddened faces of the saints

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that she might be enabled to shun the company of the worldly, and consort only with God's people and that the tones of prayer now in her ears might sink deep into her heart as the voice of one who would never cease to feel an interest in her temporal and eternal welfare. His hand tightened its grasp upon hers, and his face turned more towards her; and as Harriet, blushing spite of the awe weighing on her heart, stole a look at the devout man, she met the full gaze of his coal-black eyes fixed unwinkingly upon her. She was entranced. She dared not stir, and she dared not take her eyes from his. And when he came to his amen, she sank back upon the ground, and covered her face with her hands. And presently she remembered with some wonder, that the old man, for whom Mr. Flint had come to pray, had not been even mentioned in the prayer.

The lad left the room after the amen, and Mr. Flint raised Harriet from the floor and seated her upon a chair out of the old man's sight, and pulled a hymn-book from his pocket, and sat down beside her. She was a very enthusiastic singer, to say the least, and he commonly led the singing at the conferences, and so, holding her hand that she might beat the time with him, he passed an hour in what he would call very sweet communion. And, by this time the mistress of the family came home, and Mr. Flint took his leave.

From that evening, Mr. Flint fairly undertook the "eternal welfare" of the beautiful girl. From her kind mistress he easily procured for her the indulgence due to an awakened sinner, and she had permission to frequent the nightly conference, Mr. Flint always charging himself with the duty of seeing her safely home. He called sometimes in the afternoon, and had a private interview to ascertain the "state of her mind," and under a strong "conviction" of something or other, the excited girl lived now in a constant reverie, and required as much looking after as a child. She was spoiled as a servant, but Mr. Flint had only done his duty by her.

This seemed all wrong to Rosier, the barber, however. The bright, sweet face of the girl he thought to marry, had grown sad, and her work went all amiss- he could see

that. She had no smile, and almost no word, for him. He liked little her going out at dusk when he could not accompany her, and coming home late with the same man always, though a very good man, no doubt. Then, once lately, when he had spoken of the future, she had murmured something which Mr. Flint had said about "marrying with unbelievers," and it stuck in Rosier's mind and troubled him. Harriet grew thin and haggard besides, though she paid more attention to her dress, and dressed more ambitiously than she used to do.

We are reaching back over a score or more of years for the scenes we are describing, and memory drops here and there a circumstance by the way. The reader can perhaps restore the lost fragments, if we give what we remember of the outline.

The old man died, and Rosier performed the last of his offices to fit him for the grave, and that, if we remember rightly, was the last of his visits, but one, to the white house in Sheafe lane. The bed was scarce vacated by the dead, ere it was required again for another object of pity. Harriet was put into it with a brain fever. She was ill for many weeks, and called constantly on Mr. Flint's name in her delirium, and when the fever left her, she seemed to have but one desire on earth that he should come and see her. Message after message was secretly carried to him by the lad, whom she had attached to her with her uniform kindness and sweet temper, but he never came. She relapsed after a while into a state of stupor, like idiocy, and when day after day passed without amendment, it was thought necessary to send for her father to take her home.

A venerable looking old farmer, with white hairs, drove his rough wagon into Sheafe lane one evening, we well remember. Slowly, with the aid of his long staff, he crept up the narrow staircase to his daughter's room, and stood a long time, looking at her in silence. She did not speak to him.

He slept upon a bed made up at the side of hers, upon the floor, and the next morning he went out early for his horse, and she was taken up and dressed for the journey. She spoke to no one, and when the old man had breakfasted, she quietly submitted to be carried towards the door. The sight of the street first seemed to awaken some recollection, and suddenly in a whisper she called to Mr. Flint.

"Who is Mr. Flint?" asked the old man. Rosier was at the gate, standing there with his hat off to bid her farewell. She stopped upon the sidewalk, and looked around hurriedly.

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