hoped, indeed, that one of my friends was living to take care of me."

"Alas! you have suffered much," said Philip.

"It is only since a little while," answered Marie, "that I have been so sad; but sorrowful enough then for many years."

"Where have you been ?-when did you go to that convent?"

"It is little more than a year since I have been at Santa Maria, and for a time I was very happy there. But a few months ago, I lost my best friend. I thought it was sorrow enough when Sister Theresa left me; she was too beautiful to live long; she was heavenly always, so I ought not to feel sorrowful for her. But I did feel very sadly; I didn't know there were such heavy troubles left behind."

"How came you with these Grimshaws?" asked Agnes.

"Oh! my father, my dear father!” cried Marie; "I did not see him again-"

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It is not possible-" Philip began.

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I

Yes, yes, I shall never see him again. They came to tell me in the school that there was some one to see me from my father. Oh! how joyfully I went to see my father's friend! should be so glad to know one who had known him! At first he spoke to me kindly, and, perhaps he did not know better-and, indeed, what difference would it have made in the way he told me that my father was dead! Oh! that is the first time I have said that terrible word. He had been in Africa; and, indeed, I ought to like this Mr. Grimshaw, for it was at his house that my father was taken sick. He was going to write to me-he meant to write to me, but every day he thought he should be better that he should come to me himself. Only once he said that if anything happened to him, would Mr. Grimshaw come and take me home. Another time he spoke of a letter he had written to a friend of his that he had not yet finished, which I should bring home myself. This letter Mr. Grimshaw brought to me; but alas! there was no

address. So I seemed quite friendless, though I did not know it myself. I was so overwhelmed with my great sorrow that I knew only that, or, indeed, scarcely knew the depths of that. I believe I was wild-was passionate; yet I submitted to Mr. Grimshaw when he told me he must carry me away with him. I wished to go; I did not care where. Yet, after we left the school, we lingered awhile-"

"And I was there," interrupted Philip. "Oh! why was I so blind!"

"But was it not terrible that I should never see my father again?-that he I could not come to me to bid me farewell?-that his last words I should learn through a stranger? The letter of his, I believed must be to you, Mr. Philip; yet I did not know your whole name. I studied it as his last wish."

"Let me see it," said Philip, eagerly; 66 a letter to me?"

"It is here," said Marie; "they are his only words. He could send me no other."

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My dear young friend," the letter said, "you are the only person who can know me by that name; the only person, I believe, who would be willing to call me a friend. Even your friendship for me I would not put to the proof, but in behalf of my child, of whom, I believe, you must have kind remembrances. I recall myself to you. You know the circumstances under which I left home; I have tried to keep from her a knowledge of them. I hope to leave behind me some resources for her, that she may not have to blame me for her neglect. Philip, you remember her gay, young, and happy, in the midst of luxury and ease; you will find her alone, without friends, in discomfort; perhaps this may touch your heart, and make you willing to take her into your guardianship. My affairs-"

This was all the letter contained.

"Your father has left me your guardian," said Philip, joyfully, and you will give me your consent, too?"

"But-no, " said Marie, looking down;

shaw tells me that my father left behind him nothing for my

support. Indeed, I cannot tell you the hard words he said of my father-my own father! It chilled all the feeling I had begun to cherish towards my father's friend. To think I was a burden to any one; oh! that was heavy enough; but to have his memory charged with anything wrong! I told Mr. Grimshaw-I told them all, I would work for them day and night that I would rather work; it was a happiness for me that he left no fortune behind him, because I needed to work, I should be so unhappy now he was gone."

"And so they made you an upper servant," exclaimed Agnes, "and loaded you with their parcels."

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They have no claim upon you now," said Philip. "I am your guardian by your father's will. It is, indeed, fortunate that there is no property besides, or my title to take charge of it might be disputed. While a young, tender girl I will go to them directly."

"You shall be my sister," said Agnes; "I am Philip's cousin, and you shall work for me, too; only it shall be such pretty work as you love--like that delicate handkerchief that has bewitched me so much. What charm did you work into it?"

The handkerchief! what had become of it? Philip had let it fall from his hand when he recognized Marie. He opened the door; in the entry was Marie's little trunk, deserted by the Grimshaws, and the disconsolate Jemmy, just leaving. Philip called him back, and Agnes and Marie listened to his errand. He did not go away till his claim to the reward was fully satisfied.

But the handkerchief! As it lay in the corridor, a sudden gust of wind from an opened door had blown it down the entry. A servant picked it up, and carried it, broom in hand, to the window, to examine it.

"Sorrow! and is not that beautiful!" she exclaimed; "it is as thin as the cobweb mistress just showed me; it's the prettiest thing I have seen since I came to this country. Why ever did I leave my own? Sure, it was for following you, Patrick; and if I should be always going after you, I should not be at rest yet The grass was green there,

and the birds used to sing. It was not all up-stairs and down, as I have to go all day now. Why ever did I leave my home? And such a long way to come here, too! I can't remember the months. And will I never go home again? I will never know my way back. I would like to see the good old country once more, just to know it is better there than here. Sure, it was warmer to my heart. Here there's no Patrick--nobody else that is like my old home."

She tried to wipe her eyes with her apron; the dust-pan and broom fell from her hands. The light, thin handkerchief, too, left her grasp, and floated out of the window.

"There it goes!" cried the girl, as she watched it floating beyond her reach; "it looks like a white dove; and I think it must be a bird from the old country, to set me dreaming of home. It has fallen on the ground!

"No, it is away again! Where will it go now?"

top of a tall steeple in process of erection.) It was a golden epoch in your life when the requisite amount of coppers had accumulated in your stone money-jug, to enable you to ascend the stairs with impunity, and to return the stare of the old lamp-black heroes that leaned from the wall to guard the en

trance.

But, after all, it was somewhat fearful to find yourself alone, surrounded by the silence and immensity of this wonderful place--knowing that a real stuffed alligator lay concealed somewhere, and that Miss McCrea was constantly being murdered by Indians somewhere else. The grim heads began to be cheerful company, when contrasted with the unknown horrors beyond-occupying a locality favoring flight, in case anything wicked or supernatural should suddenly appear. It was this feeling of indefinable dread that prompted you to study a whirlwind of paint denominated a naval engagement, in which Decatur was supposed to be leaving his ship in a jolly-boat (although nothing of the kind could be made out), with a very uneasy sense of satisfaction. It would have been presumptuous to have doubted the merit of that picture then; but, as you have since picked up some knowledge of art, the conviction has forced itself upon your mind that it was no more than a miserable daub; and that old Time, considering it unworthy of those mellowing touches it is his wont to bestow on paintings, had, in a fit of indignation, knocked it black and blue at once. You mustered a little courage, slowly, and ventured to look around.

That case of ancient shoes, with an astonishing variety of heels and toes, attracted less of your attention, perhaps, than did a large, jagged, sulphursuggesting rock, which, you were assured by a label, came down from the sky! Even now, you do not feel particularly grateful to the Old Museum for that bit of scientific information; for a duplicate stone has acted a prominent part in numerous dreams, and you have, more or less, expected it to come crashing through the roof of your dwelling, sometime in the night season. Those strange, dingy men-of-war, every rope perfect, made by sailors, while off on tedious whaling-voyages, were deeply interesting, but not so marvelous, perhaps, as a long wooden chain, the links

of which were interspersed with balls, in impossible situations. The chain was especially fascinating, for the reason that it was executed with a jack-knife, in the hands of a convict, whose original sentence had been commuted to imprisonment for life, and who employed his leisure moments in this ingenious manner, in order that he might keep his mind occupied, and live through it. A light bark canoe, ornamented with beads, and containing savage-looking war-clubs, came in for a share of inspection, and you felt bound to believe that whole families of sanguinary SouthSea Islanders had paddled the affair in various directions, for the purpose of feeding upon the members of other tribes, with whom they had a hereditary misunderstanding. The old continental coat said to have been worn by General Putnam, when he clattered down the rocks at Stamford, and the crimson-clad British fired from above, conflicted slightly with the account in the school history, showing as it did, if we recollect, sixty-three perforations in the back (done by the royalists, the Christian proprietor claimed), of which the compilation for youth made no mention thus leaving it an open question, whether the historian, the owner of the museum, or the moths had the right of it. There was an electrical machine in one of the apartments, and a cameraobscura up in the cupola-but these were so shockingly out of repair that they left no vivid impression upon the mind. If you mounted a chair, stood on tip-toe, and dislocated your neck, highly-colored pictures of cities could be seen by gazing through little round windows-London, Glasgow, Paris, Naples, Rome, Pekin, and so on; but as there was a good deal of sameness in these pictorial cities, you concluded it was just about as well to live in your native town, as to 66 see Naples and

die."

A baby with two largely-developed heads, dancing a polka in a glass jar, and habitually under the influence of spirits, was too fantastic to be looked at for any length of time; and it was pleasant to turn to the contemplation of a ferocious wild boar, with glaring eyes and tremendous tusks, which seemed on the eve of attacking a wonderfully large and majestic elephant, just opposite. The mammoth shark, suspended from the ceiling, you strong

ly suspected of being the same old fish that bit off the legs of Mr. Campbell (as related in the National Reader), when he very imprudently disregarded the advice of friends, and, at the close of a sultry day, plunged from the deck of a ship into a tropical sea, and had an end put to his foolish existence. Passing the ruins of a mastodon-skillfully constructed from the osseous portion of the before-mentioned elephant, and patched with the bones of that useful animal, the horse--the youthful visitor arrived at a window-fronted room, and, shading his eyes, saw the most horribly-attractive combination of curiosities that the Old Museum had to offer, at any price. No young person, who ever saw them, can have forgotten those painted and feather-bedecked savages, brandishing tomahawks and scalping-knives around the disheveled head of the kneeling Miss McCrea, or those two tears of the magnitude of marbles, resting upon her pale and beautiful cheeks! And there was Black Hawk, in a blue frock-coat, adorned with glittering U. S. navy buttons, a long red sash, and other evidences of refinement. Why, oh! why rushed he not in to save the unfortunate

young lady, instead of standing in one corner of the forest, watching a fragment of ragged anaconda, and a poor, dusty little pelican?

We sincerely believe that group of wax statuary has only been surpassed in modern times by a couple of families once owned by the St. Helena showman: one of which was intended to illustrate the evils of drinking too freely, and the other designed to show the blessings likely to flow from using cold water exclusively as a beverage--but both so excessively disagreeable that the spectator was left in doubt as to which domestic circle had the advantage.

When you came out of this collection of wonders, and stood in the sunshine and bustle of the principal street (after a seeming absence of several days), you could not but feel a mingled sentiment of surprise and pity towards a schoolmate, who was squandering his property for a pine-apple, at the corner confectionery, as the money thus invested would, more wisely expended, have carried him triumphantly into the Old Museum. Very likely he had already been in. Yes, but why didn't he go in again?