to hide by dropping her work and stooping low | sat alone, longing—yes, at last her heart's pain to pick it up. Mrs. Livingstone and her son had come to that-longing to die. Tears began went on talking, she scarcely knew of what; and to fall, salt and bitter. They dropped unheeded presently they both left the room and she was into her lap-her eyes were fixed on the glowalone. Then she took herself to task. What ing fire, but she was blind for the time and deaf. a fool she was! What chance was there that Some one came in and stood watching her, but the boy she knew in Derry-nineteen when she she did not know it, until a low, tender voice last saw him-had made his way to any position stole through the gloaming, calling her name as where Howard Livingstone would be likely to it had not been called for so long: speak of his coming as an event to be desired? "Olive, Olive!" Might there not be more than one Mark Rollins in the world? She tried to be grave and sensible, but she could not sleep quietly that night; and next day, when it was almost time for the visitor to come, a force of attraction she was not strong enough to resist drew her to a window which commanded a view of the avenue up to the house. If you had watched her standing there, you must have remarked how young her face grew, as she saw, instead of the snowy landscape on which her eyes seemed to rest, the brown house with the hill behind it, and the pleasant, sloping meadow-land where she had walked in the sunshine with her boy lover. It was a face, that of Olive West, which held rare possibilities of beauty. You could see that now, when a bright, warm color flushed the cheeks, and a secret, keen emotion dilated the gray, earnest eyes, and parted the scarlet lips. She heard a merry peal of bells at last, which roused her from her trance of memory. Young Livingstone was driving his prancing grays up the avenue, and beside him sat-was it the Mark Rollins whom she knew, this man with bronzed and bearded face, and high-bred air? A familiar gesture, turn of the head, wave of the hand, convinced her. Her very heart seemed choking her. She went away into a room where no one was likely to come, and sat down to think. He was there-but he was changed. He was far removed from her now-farther than when only years and distance had been between them. Should she let him know of her existence? Bitterly-more bitterly than she had ever felt it before-she felt now the weight of her father's crime. Not only had he left Derry in disgrace, which must reflect upon her, but she could not forget that the father of Mark Rollins was the one who had suffered most heavily through his guilt. Doubtless, knowing all as he must, Mark scorned even her memory. And, were it otherwise, she would never humiliate him by intruding in the capacity of Mrs. Livingstone's seamstress upon Mrs. Livingstone's guest. So resolved, she began to pray that he might go soon-it was too keen a torture to know that he was in the house, to catch now and then, when a door chanced to be opened, his laugh, or the clear ring of his voice. She sprang to her feet and looked at the man standing beside her, but she could not speak He bent toward her with a smile of triumph. "I thought I should find you at last. I have been getting ready for you all these years." "You knew how and why we left Derry?" she questioned him, eagerly. "Yes, I knew." "And the loss fell heaviest upon your father, did it not?" "Yes, and became mine by inheritance. Three months after you left Derry my father died. You thought him a stern man. I know your father feared him." He waited for her to speak, and she said, in a low tone: "Yes, he dreaded to fall into Mr. Rollins's hands more than any thing else. He thought the rest might possibly show him some mercyfrom your father he could expect none." "And yet my father was his best friend. It was he who opposed making any attempt at pursuit. He said that the man had given up all he had, and there would be nothing to be gained by apprehending him. Nor did he ever talk about him vindictively. Few points as they had in common he understood your father's nature, I think, and divined his temptations. He said the Company had made enough that year to be able to lose what the old place would not cover without feeling it. But if the case had been ten times worse, did you understand me so little as to think it would change me? I have loved you all my life, and I have never doubted, through all these years of vain search for you, but that some day I should find my own." "How did it come about at last?" she asked, softly-her hand was in his now. "In a curious way enough. One night last month I was talking with Livingstone about what he called misalliances. He had been a client of mine, and a sort of intimacy had sprung up between us, and this night, somehow, we fell into a discussion about matrimony. It chanced that he mentioned you, his mother's seamstress, as an illustration of the kind of person one could hardly marry- beautiful and charming as he had discovered you to be. I pitied the shallowness of his perceptions, while I blessed inwardly the good fortune which was keeping you for me, for I never doubted that it was my Olive West of whom he spoke. I did not come to you at once, because I wanted to finish getting ready for you. I had waited so long that I could afford to wait a little longer. When I had arranged all according to my plans | in the morning twilight with her father nine and wishes I came. To-night I have been tell- years before. They drove through ways growing Mrs. Livingstone our story, and she is wait- ing constantly more familiar and stopped at ing to welcome you as my betrothed." last before an old brown house with a hill rising behind it, its summit touched with the lingering glow of sunset. Meadows sloped greenly to the eastward-farm lands stretched into the south, and at the gate stood Job Lee and his wife, ready to bid the master and mistress welcome. Mrs. Livingstone was an unspoiled woman of fashion-her heart as warm to lovers' hopes as in her earliest youth. Her own marriage had been so entirely happy that at fifty she was ca*pable of enthusiasm, of friendship, of generosity. She received her former seamstress, whom she had always liked and trusted, at once to the position of a family friend-superintended the hurried preparations for her marriage, and wished her joy on her bridal morning. And joy came. Does it not come, I wonder, to all who bear discipline patiently, and learn of sorrow the lessons she is sent to teach? If we are obstinate, and will not heed our teacher, we may have still to con the hard task all our lives-who knows how many lives more? They had been married four months before Olive knew all that Mark had done for her sake. She found out one day, when they took a long car ride, and stopped at last at Pentonville Station, and she rode across country with her husband in the evening twilight, as she had ridden "There, Olive," said the husband, tenderly, "this is my bridal present, which I have waited until now to offer you. When my father died this place was still unsold-the property of the Company. I bought it, and paid enough for it to cover all the loss they had sustained. I have succeeded well enough in my chosen calling not to miss the money; and, Olive, no man in Derry can say now that he lost any thing by our father." “Our father!" She understood by those words how he was taking up all her burdens and bearing them for her, assuming even the shadow of her disgrace and turning darkness into day. Her heart was too full for any words; but he did not miss the thanks which her fastfalling tears would not let her utter. Editor's Easy Chair. HOMAS CARLYLE has a theory that the word THO club, as applied to a social assembly, is the relic, "in a singularly dwindled condition," of the vow or oath of the famous chivalric associations of six and seven centuries since. But we learn from a pleasant paper in the New York Evening Post that Mr. John Timbs of London has written a sprightly book about clubs, in which he disputes Carlyle's assertion. The sly satire of Carlyle is very characteristic. The lounger in the reading-room or the great window of a London club is so sharp a contrast to the fiery Templar with his battle-axe that the grim satirist can not but delight in pointing him out. "So," we can imagine him saying, "the heroic soldier of religion has come to this, a dandy bored to death and yawning in a highly-upholstered parlor over the poetry of Sir Pelham Bulwer!" His derivation of "club" must have been a huge delight to the philosopher of Chelsea. And yet his own parlor in which he sits enthroned and discourses to admiring pilgrims drawn from all parts of the world to his doors, is exactly a club like Will's in which Addison reigned supreme. The fine house is an accident. The Divinity is as present in the shabbiest shed as in the towering cathedral. Besides, Carlyle should remember that if the gilded youth smoking idly in a London drawingroom are poor representatives of Ivanhoe or Richard of the Lion Heart, and if Godfrey of Boulogne would have regarded an elegant habitué of the Reform, or the Oxford and Cambridge, or the Atheneum, or the Carlton, with very much the same feeling that Gulliver looked at the Liliputian standing in his hand, yet out of those same drawing-rooms and airy listlessness came the young soldiers who rode at Balaklava "Into the jaws of death, Into the mouth of hell." The stoutest heart does not always beat under the coarsest cloth. Noblesse oblige is one of the sayings which have a spiritual meaning; for essential nobleness obliges to heroism and generosity, and it is a rule of counterfeits to imitate nature as closely as possible. Thus the paste gentleman imitates courtesy and ludicrously imitates honor. In the conduct and bearing of the people who are vulgarly called gentlemen, but who have no gentleness of soul, we constantly see the travesty of the nobleman or noble man. Then also some characters are mixed, like ore in which veins of pure gold and sheer earth alternate. But the grim Chelsea moralist allows less and less for human nature, and when he looks in at the windows of club and sees the fashions of to-day, he does not also see the ancient virtue behind them, which is yet there. It is not that virtue is invisible, but that he is blind. "This is a club, is it ?" says that rich, melancholy voice, with the Scotch burr upon the tongue; "this is the outcome of the Knights Templars and Hospitallers? Ab, yes; in a singularly dwindled condition." New York maintains her increasing fame and character as a metropolis by her increasing clubs. The loiterer on Broadway of twenty-five and thirty years ago, who remembers the modest mansion just below Franklin Street in which the Union Club had its rendezvous, would be amazed and lost could he be introduced to the many and splendid clubs which are now scattered through the finest parts of the city. Like all the great clubs of Europe they have each a special character, and since the war there are for the first time true political clubs; like the "Beefsteak" and the "October" of Swift's time in Lon don. Hitherto in this country we had shown the crudity of our civilization by banning politics in | from the South was the guest of honor. The consociety, as if social influence were not one of the versation at table gradually lurched toward the inmost desirable to bring to bear upon the purification evitable topic, and we were edified with the most of politics. If the man who is in habitual league anxious and earnest praises of the Southern "instiand collusion with corrupt and ignorant men, with tution." Yet such was the ascendency of that bullies and blacklegs, for the purpose of securing view that it was considered impolite at a gentleman's political results, is to be received with the same cord- table for a man to vindicate the rights of humanity; iality by honorable men and women as those who and those who did not agree with what was saidare of their own kind, the severest penalty of his and so far as manner was concerned, not uncourtinfamous conduct is evaded. And this was former-eously-by the chief guest, sat in a smiling imbecility of silence. Was it surprising that those who found it easy to padlock our mouths supposed that it would not be hard to have their way in all things? ly the result, it was evaded. But when the political differences festered into civil war, it became quite impossible for a man to enjoy the society of another who was openly favor- This social cowardice was one of the symptoms ing by sympathy, if not secretly aiding with mate- of national demoralization. If every gentleman rial, the slaughter of his sons and brothers. It was and every lady at Saratoga and Newport, and at absolutely necessary for the morality of the nation all dinners and suppers, had, upon occasion, frankthat those who differed upon the merits of a strug-ly expressed their real sentiments, some vast misgle which involved every thing sacred and precious calculations would have been saved. The eyes are should not affect a feeling which it was monstrous | very blind which do not see that the future welfare to entertain. Consequently political lines were of this country depends upon the fullest freedom drawn with a precision never before thought of. of tongue and pen. Mr. Pollard, of Richmond, The old Union Club, in the city of New York, actu- should he chance to read this, would naturally inally declined to expel Judah Benjamin, who, as war quire, "Why, then, does General Grant silence my secretary of the rebellion, was directing the guns paper?" Because of martial law. When you apwhich destroyed the sons of other members of the pealed to the sword you consented to abide by the club, and the Loyal League Club was at once estab-law of the sword, and that does not allow perfect lished, the cardinal condition of membership being liberty of speech and pen. Had you trusted to the unswerving fidelity to the national cause. The Cen- tongue and pen the sword could not have imposed tury, which had unanimously elected as President its law. a venerable scholar and lover of art and friend of artists, but whose sympathies were adverse to the great cause, perceived the enormity of suffering itself to be represented to strangers by such a chief, thereby inevitably giving the world the impression that the war was a superficial quarrel of politicians instead of the life-struggle of a nation, and removed him from his position. In all such cases it was idle to plead the comity of clubs, and the most tragical folly to urge that politics should not poison society. It is easy to imagine Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne, after their great debate in the Capitol, pleasantly descending the steps and dining together. But it is impossible to fancy Joseph Warren or Samuel Adams dining with General Gage while the red coats were marching to Concord. While differences are purely speculative and are maintained in good temper social intercourse is possible. But when the debate storms into shot and shell it is impracticable to take wine together. The French officers in a famous battle are reported to have said to their antagonists, "Gentlemen, if you please, fire first!" But it was not their quarrel. Their position was merely perfunctory. It is only those who are fighting ex officio who risk any thing upon a point of politeness. It is amusing to observe how long and how carefully we strove to avoid giving any political school in this country the intrenchment of a social club. It is amusing, because we were doing the very thing that we played we were not doing. The whole club force of society in New York was really tacitly directed against liberal opinions and reforms, and it was probably so in other cities. The under current in the club which refused to expel Judah Benjamin in 1861 was indicated twenty years before when it blackballed John Jay. "Society" was subject to the traditional, feudal, anti-American theories which culminated in civil war, because they are essentially hostile to the inevitable development of this country. The Easy Chair recalls a dinner at Newport, fifteen years ago, at which a Senator The value of a political club in our "society" is this, that it invests with a visible social dignity and importance views which many young men naturally hold and approve at a time when every decoration of "respectable" consideration is most powerful. If they find opinions superbly lodged and fêted, drinking the choicest wines, and girt with the blandishments of beauty, at an age when they are most susceptible to such attractions, the temptation is very strong to adopt them. An opinion which carries a cotton umbrella and dines cheaply in a cellar is not seductive to youth. The establishment of political clubs is a sign of the greater manhood of the country which the war has developed. They give every opinion the aid of every influence, and destroy the social glamour with which old feudal injustice and Toryism have hitherto so skillfully surrounded themselves. They promote that independence which in this country has been sadly lacking. IN Dickens's All the Year Round young Chesterfield writes letters to his papa. It is a sign of the times. Punch represents a paterfamilias coming into his bedroom at four in the morning after a party. His young son of eight is sitting upon his bed, dressed, and kicking his heels. The astonished parent exclaims: " Why, how's this, Reginald? Not in bed yet? It's nearly four o'clock! You should have been asleep hours ago!" "Haw! And pray, why me in particular, papa?" That is another sign of the times. Such a cut would have had no significance or humor a century ago. The little people were put to bed. They had not yet invaded the social domain of the elders. Look in any print of that period, read any novel of the time, and you find it is the parents and not the children who constitute society. We have changed all that somewhat. At thirty men retire from "society;" at forty women are called "old." 66 But Society" is the perpetual target of satire. it sweeps on, unconscious. It has certain distinct ive attributes recognized in all countries and times. | When it comes to marrying, you know, why that's But it is in old countries, where the machinery plays another matter. Girls of my set, and educated as with perfect ease, that it is pleasantest. The bloom we are, are not meant for poor men's wives. But of that fruit is ease, but ease comes only with habit that is no reason why we should not waltz with and cultivation. It is, meanwhile, a fact that we poor men if they dance well." try to make money do the whole work of society, and our success is not brilliant. Here, for instance, is a note from a pleasant good fellow, whose name we will hide under the alias of Pearl Gray. I am If Mr. Pearl Gray accepts this philosophy, let him be comforted. It is rather hard; but there is much truth in it. It is, for so delicate and dainty a "DEAR EASY CHAIR,-What is to be done? little lady, fearfully coarse and mercenary, and Miss Whither are we drifting? I echo Governor Foote's Fairy Snowflake must not be too strictly accountremarks in his late interesting book upon the war, ed a representative young woman. But why should published in Franklin Square, O my country! we be surprised that fire melts? Why should it O tempora, O mores!' The case is this: If you think and live money? If Miss Fairy is a good shock us that a pupil of the school of money should have ever been to a ball in the selecter circles you know that there is a culmination of felicity called partner in the waltz and pleasant withal, our ad"The German.' If you don't dance the German, vice to Mr. Pearl Gray is to engage her for the next what on earth do you go to a ball for? I do dance German. But we do not advise him to engage her the German, and bad luck to me next morning at for life. Can he not enjoy a dance with her even half past seven when I tumble out of bed for break-if he is not to marry her? Does he really wish to fast, so as to be at the office by nine o'clock. marry her, if he knows the reason why she thinks it a clerk, you know, and clerks are not millionaires. impossible? Yet once in a way I like to send a bouquet to the reigning Queen of my soul, when I know that I am to dance with her in the German, although I can't often do it. Naturally we who go almost every night to a ball and meet the same girls, engage our partners from evening to evening. But as Shoddy and Petroleum will have it, the fellows belonging to those families always send superb bouquets to the girls they engage in a dance for partners; and the rest of us know it, and what is the consequence? Simply that if I want to dance with Fairy Snowflake, for instance (and who wouldn't?), I know that if she promises me I can not send her a bouquet, and yet I cut her off from accepting Sam Shoddy who can. So I refrain; I do not ask her. For why should I be the means of depriving her of a bouquet, when I know how much girls enjoy carrying them; and what perfumed weapons of offense they are! No, Sir. It has become a habit to do this thing, and Pearl Gray, for one, dances fewer Germans, and contemplates retiring from society. I confide the fact to you, begging your advice." The Easy Chair has no advice to give. Master Pearl Gray shall hear the counsel of a pleasanter Mentor. Will he please read these lines from Fairy Snowflake herself? We may THE Boston Transcript says truly that when the two parties in our late civil war begin to "poke fuu" at each other the clouds are really beginning to clear. indeed now believe that the feeling of contempt at least is eliminated, and upon this point we may let by-gones be by-gones. The somewhat popular theory in one part of the country, that the people of the other were windy Gascons breathing fire and fury merely, and the equally popular faith that the people of the other part were pining to sell their souls for sixpence, and were only tuppenny tinkers whatever tuppenny tinkers may be- are both finally exploded. The soldiers upon either side during the war do not accuse the other of cowardice. The shock was fierce and prolonged because it was a collision of the same general stock and quality. If we are to live together-and it is tolerably clear that we are--it will be henceforth a very unneces sary and uncomfortable business to look at each other for the sole purpose of sneering and bickering. Nothing could be more utterly contemptible than to persist in systematic depreciation. Alienation, bitterness of feeling, sore remembrance, we must all count upon for some time yet. No nation can be torn up by the roots and not show sad signs of the convulsion for many and many a day. But the necessity of good feeling for healing our ghastly wounds need not encourage a mean reticence or cowardice. The purer the air the sounder the human system that breathes it, and the freer the speech the more truly free and prosperous is the nation that trusts it. If we had all guarded free "What foolish fellows young men are, my good friend, the Easy Chair! Do they really suppose that we prefer pretty flowers to good partners? I am speaking of dancing, you remember, you wicked man! and not of life-partners. That is another point, and upon that I imitate Pa and reserve my decision! But there is Pearl Gray, a capital part-dom of discussion and of the press as the very heart ner and an agreeable man. He knows that he dances well. He knows that I like to dance with him, and yet because he thinks Sam Shoddy may engage me, if I am not promised, and send me a bouquet, which Gray could not do, he holds aloof. Now, in what position does he leave me? I must either not dance, or take the best fellow who comes along, or I must wait for the chance of Sam Shoddy; and even if he asks me, I don't care to dance with him, bouquet or no bouquet. I wish men like Pearl Gray would understand that dancing is dancing, and that I and all other girls at a ball want good dancers and agreeable partners. We are not so enamored of bouquets as he seems to imagine; and if you conveniently can, I wish, in a general way, you would make him understand it. | tle. of our whole political system, as in every free Government it is, we should have escaped how many and many a national sorrow! Henceforth let our battles be new battles, or new forms of the old one, for the contest of every nation is essentially the same. It is the struggle of Whig and Tory; of Liberal and Conservative. It was the fate of this country that certain sections corresponded to the conflict of ideas. That is always a misfortune in a free Government, for it is desirable that the contest shall be kept as exclusively as possible in the intellectual arena. There it will be henceforward in this country. We shall be divided by sentiments not by systems, and our differences will be such as the tongue and the pen can most wisely set It is the Petersburg (Virginia) Index that gives the following thrust at the Yankees. It is the first truly humorous hit that we remember; and to perfect it, it would be only necessary to discover that the writer is a Yankee! That would be the joke of jokes! "Our private opinion and belief is, that there are authentic documents now in the library of Yale College-or they will be there when needed to prove that Bunker Hill Monument marks the site of Babylon the Mighty; that Carthage was no more nor less than Portland; Ostia, Nahant; and Boston, in fact, Athens; that Homer was Professor of Belles-Lettres at Harvard, and Palinurus a member of the Cambridge Yacht Club; that Priscian taught a grammar-school at Montpelier, and Archimedes was a private tutor of chemistry in Concord; that St. Peter was a Cape Cod fisherman, and St. Matthew a collector of the internal revenue at Stonington; that Phidias owned a brownstone quarry in Maine; and Socrates founded the Atlantic Monthly; that the Academia was the walk under the elmtrees at New Haven, and the Colossus of Rhodes a statue which strided from Nantucket to Martha's Vineyard; that Plymouth Rock is all that is left of the Tower of Babel, and the Connecticut River ran through Paradise; that Stonington is the site of Tyre, and Merrimac fast-colors the dyes that made that city famous; that the old Temple of Diana at Ephesus was not burned, but is now Faneuil Hall, and that Herodotus and Wendell Phillips were the same persons; that the fable of Romulus and his brother being suckled by a wolf (lupus) arose from the circumstance that their mother was the first Vermonter who looped her dresses; that Mercury was the ancient name of Ben Butler's family, and that like every thing else in New England, the family had gone on perfecting itself from the start; that the sun shines six hours per diem more on that favored spot than on any other between the poles; and that Noah's family were so much elated at an alliance with the Websters of Massachusetts that they got up a dictionary to commemorate that fact; that St. Patrick was headcentre of a Fenian circle in Bangor, and St. Andrew kept a distillery in Lowell: and, finally, that the millennium will begin in Boston, and will not be allowed to extend beyond its limits, except by a two-third vote of the tax-payers of that heavenly city, excluding all who have at any time in their most secret thoughts expressed a doubt of the propriety of hanging Jeff Davis and General Lee on a sour apple-tree." NEAR the pleasant little city of Poughkeepsie there is one of the noble monuments which true patriotism, generosity, and wealth are building all over the country. It is the Vassar Female College, munificently founded and amply endowed by Matthew Vassar, a citizen of Poughkeepsie; and a visit to it, although the way lies along the muddiest of Dutchess County roads, and the day is one of the brown and leafless February days, is yet one of the incidents which will not be forgotten, especially if your cicerone be not only a trustee of the college, but a noted and faithful brother of the pen. The long street that brings the railway traveler to the heart of the city of Poughkeepsie rises steeply from the river, and continues through the town, past the closely-built houses gradually raveling out into loose suburbs, and then pushes by the straggling outskirts into the fields, and so goes across the county to the Connecticut line. Floundering out upon this miry highway for about two miles, it was agreeable to turn sharp to the right and proceed by a pretty lane between the fields. The immediate country is very level, but fine ranges of hills break the horizon, and the Catskill Mountains are piled nobly against the northwest. In a little while you see a huge pile standing back from the road on the left, and know at once that it is the college. The building was designed by Mr. Renwick, and | is generally modeled upon the Tuileries. It is solid The entrance is not imposing, and a wooden sign over the door, "M. Vassar, Founder," is so shocking to good taste and propriety, so utterly incongruous and improper, as if it were a shop-sign, that you are hardly prepared for the plain elegance that greets you with the opening door. A long, broad, and imposing corridor runs upon each story for nearly five hundred feet from north to south. There are three main floors with a basement and cellar. The corridor in the two upper stories is brilliantly lighted by western windows, and out of it open little parlors, each of which connects with three chambers. In the parlor the occupants of the chambers study and sew and read. The rooms are neatly and prettily furnished. The chapel stretches eastward from the main building, and is entered upon the floor from the second main floor, and the gallery opens upon the third floor. Behind the chapel, and separated by its entire length from the rooms of the students, are twenty or thirty small rooms, each large enough to contain one square Steinway piano, and there, shut up to her own instrument, each pupil can practice undisturbing and undisturbed. It is a curious jangle of sound as you emerge from the rear door of the chapel. Under the chapel is the dining-room, full of sun and air, with ranges of tables for eight or ten sitters. The goddesses had dined, and the crumbs of the feast were being rapidly removed when we entered the hall. But drawn by what sweet attraction-it was not wine-sauce nor gooseberry-foolwe eagerly pushed through, following the vanishing fumes of the banquet, passing the shining silver pantry, the neat dish pantry, the aromatic spicecloset, the shelves of bread as spongy yet firm as the ambrosia of the celestial kitchens, advancing and advancing, until we came upon the upper kitchen, where in huge hot ovens the dinner is dished, and upon huge hot iron tables the meats are carved. But still pursuing the ultimate crucible in which the pleasant feast was wrought, we descended beneath the dishing and carving kitchen, and there beheld the arcana of the cook, and saw the rosy genius of "grub"-if the base slang of mere men-colleges and commons may be here tolerated-presiding with a stirring-stick over a vast steaming caldron of golden mush. In this retreat, usually so remote and inaccessible to strange and visiting eyes-and upon which we had come without a word of warning, every thing |