no place like home, as Clara, the Maid of Milan, very justly observes; and while J. Townsend would be unhappy in Maine, his heart evidently beats back there now and then.

I heard the love of home oddly illustrated in Oregon, one night, in a country bar-room. Some welldressed men, in a state of strong drink, were boasting of their respective places of nativity.

"I," said one, "was born in Mississippi, where the sun ever shines and the magnolias bloom all the happy year round."

"And I," said another, "was born in KentuckyKentucky, the home of impassioned oratory: the home of Clay: the State of splendid women, of gallant men!"

"And I," said another, "was born in Virginia, the home of Washington: the birthplace of statesmen: the State of chivalric deeds and noble hospitality!"

"And I," said a yellow-haired and sallow-faced man, who was not of this party at all, and who had been quietly smoking a short black pipe by the fire during their magnificent conversation-" and I was born in the garden spot of America."

"Where is that?" they said.

"Skeouhegan, Maine!" he replied; "kin I sell

you a razor strop ?"

8*

XI.

"I AM HERE."

THERE is no mistake about that, and there is a good prospect of my staying here for some time to come. The snow is deep on the ground, and more is falling.

The Doctor looks glum, and speaks of his illstarred countryman Sir J. Franklin, who went to the Arctic once too much.

"A good thing happened down here the other day," said a miner from New Hampshire to me. "A man of Boston dressin' went through there, and at one of the stations there wasn't any mules. Says the man who was fixed out to kill in his Boston dressin', 'Where's them mules?' Says the driver, Them mules is into the sage-brush. You go catch 'em-that's wot you do.' Says the man of Boston dressin', 'Oh no!' Says the driver, 'Oh yes!' and he took his long coach-whip and licked the man of