when I should die, he, Savall, would at least get no benefit from it; but as I spoke I had hardly strength to rise from my seat. I did rise, however, and tottered to the fire-place, but there close to it stood Savall, with the bare, cold pistol raised in his hand. 66 Any disturbance-any attempt at disturb ance, and your death shall be speedier," he said. I do not know what I answered, or whether I answered at all. I looked at the fire, however, and saw that it was to all appearance dead, not a single glimmer appeared-there was only a pile of cinders and ashes. How I longed for a strong blaze, that I might suddenly throw all my bank notes into it, and see them consumed at once before my face, and then Savall would be disappointed of the money, though my life he might have. My first feeling was one of heroic indifference to life; I thought I could die with ease, provided Savall was baulked in his expectations of obtaining the pocket-book. But how could it be removed from his grasp? Feeble, sinking as I was, I thought on the matter until an utter incapacity of thinking and planning settled down on my brain. But what could I do? There he sat, with his moveless gaze-I could not breathe without his noting every respiration. As the cold, horrible numbness and drowsiness crept gradually over me, and something like the presence of death came, a feeling of fear and dislike to the grave awoke. Life suddenly seemed warm, bright, and delight ful; innumerable happy scenes, which I had recently been planning, appeared to come into very existence around me with a most tempting brilliancy, which thrilled all the powers of grief and despair within me; for I had known so little of happiness yet in life, I reasoned, and now at last, when I might be capable of gladdening others and myself, just now to die. Fool-fool, do you yet choose dying? Will you not swallow this? You will have money enough remaining after you give me my share you will have a number of thousands still, and you are young, and made for enjoying happiness." world, in the centre of the cold, voiceless earth, away far from all human society, with only one of the black spirits of evil guarding me. For some moments I fancied I was condemned forever to that terrible fate, with the eyes of Savall alone to look upon me without ceasing throughout all duration. Afterwards a widely-different imagination possessed me with even stronger power. I thought I beheld most vividly all the scenery connected with the solitary country-place in the north of Ireland where I was born; the narrow river, the rocks and trees hanging over it; the very boat in which I had so often rowed with the well-remembered oar; the rough, uncultivated mountain, rising abruptly from the water, with the rich, luxuriant, yellow furze, and the goats browsing, just as they used to do when I was a boy, before I had dreamed of leading a literary life in London-even the glass in the windows of my father's house shone and sparkled exactly as it always did in the beautiful summer sunsets. I could have affirmed that the whole scene was before me; but I was not gazing on it with the human feelings I had when there last-it was with such emotions as the disembodied may be supposed to experience that I now looked. in choosing death in preference to life. Come, "Miserable fool!-idiot!-you still persist it is not even yet too late for wisdom; one draught, and you are safe, and better than you were before-here." My intellects had become so confused that I was barely conscious of the presence of Savall, and aware that he had come close to me, that he was standing over me, and holding a tumbler almost to my lips. Again the strong feeling of immediate death came overpoweringly upon me, mingled with a vision of all those whom I loved; my relations and friends in another country, they came to my very side, I thought, with anxious, feartul looks, for they seemed aware that I was dying; and there close, very close, was my mother's pale face, and her sobs were loud and convulsive; and there was my old and attached uncle, from whom I had been named, and who had always been so deeply interested in me, and so anxious to hear of my making a noise in the world-he was hanging over my shoulder, and he was weeping quietly without saying one word; Next I recollect there was a deep, fright- but there was such deep agony in his eyes ful silence; I heard no one single sound-no that I would have given worlds to comfort clock striking--no voice speaking or calling him-but, more striking to me than any even -not one intimation that I was in the midst of the forms of my nearest kindred, was a of a many-peopled, noisy city; I could not fair, soft, young girl's face-the face of one believe that I was in London. I thought II loved. She came close, very close to me, had been carried away to some deep abyss, I thought, and laid her hand on my brow, and down, down below the surface of the living the pressure of that hand was so warm and Though I knew Savall must have uttered the words, yet even now, as I recollect them, it seemed as if invisible spirits around me had spoken them, divining my thoughts, and counselling me accordingly. life-like, that death became still more fearfully dark and repulsive. At this period I think I had no remaining consciousness in the way of reasoning; all ny faculties were existing merely in the life of dreams. I cannot, therefore, state with any certainty what passed for many hours afterwards, but I have a k nd of recollection of a glass being held to my lips, it must have been by Savall, and I drank with no reluctance, but with delight, a cool, delicious draught, and then fell back on the sofa much happier than I had been. At last I awoke to perfect consciousness. I started up, wondering at first why I was there in a darkened room, with broad daylight streaming in through the shutters. It took me some moments to remember the scenes of the preceding night. My first thought was to search for my pocket-bookit was gone. Next I missed my watch-it was a new and valuable one; not one sixpence of loose cash was left in any of my pockets, so well had Savall ransacked my person during the period of my unconscious ness. I opened the shutters, and looked around; there were the glasses standing on the table precisely as they had been the night before -the silver spoons, and some other valuable articles, however, were not there. A strange sensation of giddiness was in my head, and I felt as feeble as when first rising from my sick-bed; but I was not apprehensive of danger, for I believed, and I suppose truly, that Savall had administered to me not poison, but some powerful narcotic or stupefying drug, in order that he might possess himself quietly of my coveted pocketbook. I supposed that he had represented to me that he had given me poison, for the malignant purpose of frightening me. His story of the antidote he possessed, I hardly believed, though, on examining a glass which stood on the table close to, the sofa, I found the remaining drops of some pungent but pleasantly-flavored mixture, nothing resembling which I ever remembered to have previously tasted; this tallied exactly with my dreamy recollections of the draught I had swallowed, and I knew not what to think. The house seemed altogether deserted as I walked out of the back parlor, the door of which was now unfastened. Not a sound of life was heard in any direction. I opened the front door, and discovered that it was far past noon.. I gave immediate information respecting Savall, and a vigilant search was immediately instituted; but not a trace either of him or his wife could be found, and I have never since even heard of him. I have experienced many deep emotions during my life, but none are more indelibly imprinted on my memory than those connected with the night I have attempted to describe. I have never since been able to open a pocket-book containing bank-notes, without the vision of Savall arising for a moment before me, as if to claim his part. So pertinaciously has this idea possessed me, notwithstanding many efforts to root it from my mind, that I have sometimes been almost tempted to believe that Savall had been long dead, and that his spirit, still doomed to feel the lust for money which in life filled him, is fated to haunt perpetually every place where pocket-books and bank-notes appear. I would often have given inuch more than the sum of which he robbed me, to get quit of the fixed impressions of him which are in my mind; but disagreeable recollections, are, and ever will be, some of the miseries of human nature. HOW I BECAME DEAF. The circumstances of that day, the last of twelve years of hearing, and the first of twenty-eight years of deafness, have a more distinct impression upon my mind than those of any previous, or almost any subsequent day of my life. It was a day to be remembered. The last day on which any customary labor ceases, the last day on which any customary privilege is enjoyed, the last day on which we do the things we have done daily, are always marked days in the calendar of life; how much, therefore, must the mind linger on the memories of a day which was the last of many blessed things, and in which one stroke of action and suffering, one moment of time, wrought a greater change of condition than any sudden loss of wealth or honors ever made in the state of man. Wealth may be recovered and new honors won or happiness be secured without them; but there is no recovery, no adequate compensation for such a loss as was on that day sustained by me. The wealth of sweet and pleasurable sounds with which the Almighty has filled the world of sounds; modulated by affection, sympathy, and earnestness, can be appreciated only by one who has so long been thus poor indeed in the want of them, and who for so many weary years has sat in utter silence amid the busy hum of populous cities, the music of the woods and mountains, and more than all of the voices, sweeter than music, which are in the winter season heard around the domestic hearth. On the day in question, my father and another man, attended by myself, were engaged in new-slating the roof of a house, the ladder ascending to which was fixed in a small court paved with flag-stones. The access to this court from the street was by a paved passage, through which ran a gutter, whereby waste water was conducted from the yard into the street. . . . In one of the apartments of the house at which we were at work, a young sailor, of whom I had some knowledge, had died after a lingering illness, which had been attended with circumstances which the doctors could not well understand. It was therefore concluded that the body should be opened to ascertain the cause of death. I knew this was to be done, but not the time appointed for the operation; but on passing from the street into yard, with a load of slates, which I was to take to the housetop, my attention was drawn to a stream of blood, or rather, I suppose, bloody water, flowing through the gutter by which the passage was traversed. The idea that this was the blood of the dead youth, whom I had so lately seen alive, and that doctors were then at work cutting him up and groping at his inside, made me shudder, and gave what I should now call a shock to my nerves at the time. I cannot but think that it was owing to this that I lost much of the presence of mind and collectedness so important to me at that moment; for when I had ascended to the top of the ladder, and was in the critical act of stepping from it on to the roof, I lost my footing and fell backward from a height of above thirty-five feet into the paved court below. Of what followed I know nothing and as this is the record of my own sensations, I can here report nothing but that which I myself know. For one moment, indeed I awoke, from that deathlike state, and then found that my father, attended by a crowd of people, was bearing me homeward in his arms; but I had no recollection of what had happened, and at once relapsed into a state of unconsciousness. In this state I remained a fortnight, as I afterward learned. : much earnestness, and was answered by signs which I did not comprehend. "Why do you not speak!" I cried; "pray let me have the book?" This seemed to create some confusion; and at length, some one more quick than the rest, hit upon the happy expedient of writing upon a slate that the book had been reclaimed by the owner, and that I could not in my weak state, be allowed to read. "But, I said, in great astonishment, "why do yon write to me; why not speak? Speak, speak?" Those who stood around the bed exchanged significant looks of concern, and the writer soon displayed upon his slate the awful words "YOU ARE DEAF. "-Dr. Kitto. SINGULAR MARRIAGE. THE Moravians have very singular notions as respects forming matrimonial connections. It is deemed disreputable for young men and women to associate together on any occasion, or to cultivate any acquaintance. The more effectually to keep them apart, the two sexes have separate habitations, where they live and carry on their respective vocations. And not only this, but in the church there is a partition, high as the roof, running from the pulpit the whole length of the house,males occupying the one part, females the other. But now for the story that put me on writing this article. The venerable old man who related it to me nearly half a century ago, was one of the most spiritually-minded men I ever saw. I never think of him without being reminded of the Apostle's description of the Christian whose "conversation is in Heaven." For many years he told me he had been steward of the young men's house at Grace Hill, and had not the least thought of chang I was very slow in learning that my hearing his situation, or of taking unto himself a ing was entirely gone. The unusual stillness of all things was grateful to me in my utter exhaustion; and if in this half-awakened state, a thought of the matter ever entered my mind, I ascribed it to the unusual care and success of my friends in preserving silence around me. I saw them talking, indeed, to one another, and thought that out of regard to my feeble condition, they spoke in whispers, because I heard them not. The truth was revealed to me in consequence of my solicitude about the book which had so much interested me on the day of my fall. It had, it seems, been reclaimed by the good old man who had lent it to me, and who, doubtless, concluded that I should have no more need of books in this life. He was wrong; for there has been nothing in this life which I have needed more. I asked for this book with wife, till an event occurred that required him to do both. A colony was about leaving the home-establishment to form the nucleus of another congregation in a very promising location at a considerable distance. This good steward was chosen as pastor, and according to the constitution of the Moravian church, he must enter on his duties as a married man. Taking the call of Providence as the rule of duty, he accepted the appointment, and agreed to have a wife elected for him. He was apprised on a certain morning that the Lord's will was indicated in the choice of a companion. His anxiety to see his bride was intense. But the rules forbade their seeing each other that day. The matron of the female house, however, with whom he had business to transact, agreed to let him see his future spouse at a distance. Exactly at twelve o'clock she was to send her across the court-yard with a basket of cucumbers to the pastor's house. Well, he placed himself on the post of observation; and, oh, horror! to his unspeakable amazement, an old, decrepit female, with a staff in one hand, and a basket of cucumbers dangling from the other, came out of the female house. "Good Lord!" he exclaimed, “what hast thou done to me now!" Till then he had always acquiesced in what appeared to him to be the decisions of unerring wisdom; but then, as he told me, his heart rose in rebellion against the divine procedure, and he formed the resolution that come what would, he never could be united to that ugly female. His mental anguish for several hours was indescribable. But towards evening an explanation was made which completely relieved him. At the time agreed upon by the matron, she went into the kitchen with the basket, and asked the head cook, who happened to be the chosen woman, to have the goodness to step over to the pastor's house with these cucumbers as a present from her, as they were the first of the season, which she promised to do, and the elderly lady withdrew. United States from which he was; and, after all these preliminaries, she related to him many flirting excursions which he had made last year, at Saratoga and Newport. All these things, whispered in good English, were very puzzling to Mr. P.; and in order to find out who his fair companion was, he invited her to supper in a private cabinet. The lady first refused; but after some time she consented, and the couple started in a carriage for the well-known restaurant of Vachette, where all the Americans take their meals. A cabinet was opened, the final petit souper was ordered; and when they came to eat it, the lady was obliged to take off her mask. Mr. P. discovered in her-who? Guess it. You give it up? Yes. She was his mother. The romance was over; and he took the joke the best way he could. Mrs. P. is one of the prettiest American women in Paris; and no one, when looking at her-considering the freshness of her complexion, and the beauty of her charms-would suppose that she had a son twenty-three years of age. HOW TO WEAR A SHAWL. The cook, not knowing that anything particular depended on her carrying the basket, Ir a lady sports a shawl at all, and only asked a transient woman who had come into very falling shoulders should venture to do the kitchen, to beg a meal of victuals, to do so, we should recommend it to be always the errand. In the course of the day, the either falling off or putting on, which promatron was apprised of the mistake, and to duces pretty action. Or she should wear it relieve completely the anxiety of the pastor upon one shoulder, and down the other, or in elect, he was introduced to the bride elect. some way drawn irregularly, so as to break The introduction threw him into an excess the uniformity. One of the faults of the of rapture. "At first sight," he said, present costume, as every real artist knows, loved the dear woman with my whole heart; is that it offers too few diagonal lines. Noand ow we have lived together twelve thing is more picturesque than a line across years, and are blessed with one dearly be- the bust, like the broad ribbon of the order loved daughter, eleven years of age. And of the garter, as worn by Queen Victoria, or I don't believe that a happier family lives on the loose girdle, sloping across the hips, in the costume of the early Plantagenets. On this very account, the long scarf shawl is as picturesque a thing as a lady can wear. With the broad pattern sweeping over one shoulder, and a narrow one, or none at all, on the other, it supplies the eye with that irregu larity which drapery requires; while the slanting form and colors of the border, lying carelessly round the figure, gives that eastern idea which every shawl more or less implies. What Oriental would ever wear one straight up and down, and uniform on both sides, as our ladies often do?—Quarterly Review. the face of the earth." I have been told by ladies educated at Grace Hill, that Moravian marriages, though effected in a strange way, were never known to be unhappy.—Con. Journal. AN EXCELLENT STORY. A YOUNG American gentleman, a Mr. P., who is visiting Paris with the "old folks," went to a masked ball to see the elephant, and to have some fun. His great desire was to meet an angel of the fair sex. He first looked all around, waiting to take a decision the moment he should find a fine waist and small feet. These beauties he discovered in a domino of small figure, who took his arm and began to intrigue with him. The lady told him his name, the city of the |