in ravished silence. He was dressed in buff hose, with a pourpoint of the same colour, bound by a girdle, from which depended a sword decorated with a fleur de lis. A cloak of silk was cast over his shoulders, and his head was covered with a narrow brimmed hat, shadowed with plumes. A lace ruff falling over his chest, left his neck uncovered. A pair of moustachios, black as jet, gave to his naturally sweet countenance a manly and warlike appearance. Large boots, which fell down in folds over his legs, carried the golden spur, the mark of chivalry. At some distance, another Cavalier sat apart, bent on the iron cross of his own sword. He was habited similarly to the other Cavalier, but ap- (To be continued.) but I never heard of it afore. Might it be your 44 "Never heard of a water-glass?" he said, slowly. May I ask what your name might be?" "Sartainly," sais I, "friend; you answered me my question civilly, and I will answer yours. I'm Sam Slick, sais I, at least what's left of me." "Sam Slick, the Clockmaker ?" sais he. "The same," said I, "and never heard of a water-glass.” "Never! Mr. Slick," said he, "I'm not so simple as you take me to be. You can't come over me that way, but you are welcome to that rise, anyhow. I wish you good mornin'." Now that's human natur' all over. A man is never astonished or ashamed that he don't know what another does; but he is surprised at the gross ignorance of the other in not knowin' what he does. But to return. If instead of the waterglass (which I vow to man I never heard of before that day), if we had a breast-glass to look into the heart, and read what is wrote, and see what is passin' there, a great part of the saints-them that don't know music or paintin' and call it a waste of precious time,and can't dance, and call it wicked, and won't go to parties, because they are so stupid no one will talk to them, and call it sinful—a THE WATER-GLASS; OR DAY-DREAM OF great lot of the saints would pass over to the LIFE. BY SAM SLICK. SAIS I to myself, the world has many nations on the face of it, I reckon, but there ain't but four classes among them: fools and knaves, saints and sinners. Fools and sinners form the bulk of mankind; rogues are numerous everywhere, while saints-real salts-are few in number, fewer, if you could look into their hearts, than folks think. I was once in Prospect Harbor, near Halifax, shortly arter a Boston packet had been wracked there. All that could float had been picked up, or washed away; but the heavy things sank to the bottom, and these in the general way were valuable. I saw a man in a boat with a great long tube in his hands, which he put down into the sea every now and then, and looked through, and then moved on and took another observation. "Awful wrack that!" said I, dolefully. "Well, it was considerable, but it might have been wuss," said he, quite composed. Ah! sais I to myself, I see how it is, you haint lost anything, that's clear, but you are lookin' for somethin'. "Sarching for gold?” said I, laughin', and goin' on t'other tack. "Every vessel, they say, is loaded with gold now-a-days?" "Well," sais he, smiling, "I ain't sarching for gold, for it ain't so plenty on this coast; but I am sarching for zinc: there are several rolls of it there." "What was that curious tube," sais I, "if I might be so bold as to ax?" Sartain," sais he, "it's a water-glass. The bottom of that tube has a large plate of glass in it. When you insert the tube into the sea, and look into it, you can perceive the bottom much plainer than you can with a naked eye." "Good!" sais I; "now that's a wrinkle on my horn. I daresay a water-glass is a common thing, sinners. Well, the sinners must be added to the fools, and it swells their numbers up considerable, for a feller must be a fool to be a sinner at all, secin' that the way of the transgressors is hard. Of the little band of rael salts of saints, a considerable some must be added to the fools' ranks too, for it aint every pious man that's wise, though he may have sense enough to be good. Arter this deduction, the census of them that's left will show a small table, that's a fact. When the devoted city was to be destroyed, Abraham begged it off for fifty righteous men. And then for fortyfive, and finally for ten; but arter all, only Lot his wife, and two daughters was saved, and that was more from marcy than their desarts, for they warnt no great shakes arter all. Yes, the breast glass would work wonders, but I don't think t would be overly safe for a man to invent it: he'd find himself, I reckon, some odd night a plaguey sight nearer the top of a lamp-post, and farther from the ground than was agreeable; and wouldn't the hypocrites pretend to lament him, and say he was a dreadful loss to mankind? That being the state of the case, the great bulk of humans may be classed as fools and knaves. The last are the thrashers and sword-fishes, and grampuses and sharks of the sea of life; and the other the great shoal of common fish of different sorts, that seem made a-purpose to feed these hungry onmerciful critters that take 'em in by the dozen at one swoop, and open their mouths wide, and dart on for another meal. The whole continent of America, from one end of it to the other, is overrun with political knaves and quack knaves. They are the greatest pests we have. One undertakes to improve the constitution of the coud try, and the other the constitu tion of the body, and their everlastin' tinkerin' injures both. How in natur folks can be so taken in, I don't know. Of all knaves, I consider them two the most dangerous, for both deal in poisonous deadly medicines. One pysons people's minds, and the other their bodies. One unsettles their heads, and the other their stomachs, and I do believe in my heart and soul that's the cause we Yankees look so thin. hollow in the cheeks, narrow in the chest, and gander-waisted. We boast of being the happiest people in the world. The President tells the Congress that bunkum every year, and every year the Congress sais, "Tho' there ain't much in you, old slippery-go-easy. at no time, that's no lie at any rate.' Every young lady sais, "I guess that's a fact." And every boy that coaxed a little hair to grow on his upper lip, puts his arm round his gall's waist and sais,"That's as true as rates, we are happy, and if you would only name the day, we shall be still happier." Well, this is all fine talk; but what is bein' a happy people? Let's see, for hang me if I think we are a happy people. When I was a boy to night-school with my poor dear old friend, the minister, and arterwards in life as his companion, he was for everlastingly correctin' me about words that I used wrong, so one day, having been down to the sale of the effects of the great Revolutionary General, Zadoc Seth, of Holmes Hole, what does he do but buy a Johnson's Dictionary for me in two volumes, each as big as a clock, and a little heavier than my wooden ones. 6. Now," sais he, "do look out words, Sam, so as to know what you are a-talking about." One day, I recollect it as well as it it was yesterday-and if I loved a man on earth, it was that man-I told him if I could only go to the Thanksgiving Ball, I should be quite happy. "Happy!" said he, "what's that?" "Why happy," sais I, “is-bein' happy, to be sure." Why that's of course," sais he, "a dollar is a dollar, but that don't inform me what a dollar represents. I told you you used words half the time you did'nt understand the meanin' of." "But I do," sais I; happy means being so glad, your heart is ready to jump out of its jacket for you.', "Yes-yes," sais he; "and I suppose if it never jumped back again, you would be unhappy for all the rest of your life. I see you have a very clear conception of what 'happy' means. Now look it out; let us see what the great and good Dr. Johnson says." "He sais it is a state where the desires are satisfied-lucky-ready." wherever he was. Thunderin' long words aint "Thank you, Sir," said I, and off I cuts hot foot, when he called me back; I had a great mind to pretend not to hear him, for I was atraid he was a-goin to renig-. Sam," said he, and he held out his hand and took mine, and looked very seriously at me ;"Sam, my son," said he, "now that I have granted you permission to go, there is one thing I want you to promise me. I think myself you will do it without any promise, but I should like to have your word." "I will observe any direction you may give me, Sir," said I. Sam," said he, and his face grew so long and blank, I hardly knew what was a-comin' next, "Sam," said he, "don't let your heart jump out of its jacket," and he laid back in his chair, and laughed like anythin', in fact I could not help laughin' myself to find it all end in a joke. Presently he let go my hand, took both his, and wiped his eyes, for tears of fun were in 'em. Minister," sais I," will you let me just say a word?" Yes," sais be. "Well, according to Dr. Johnson's third sense, that was a happy thought, for it was ready.' "Well, I won't say it war'nt," said he; and, Sam, in that sense you are likely to be a happy man all your life, for you are always ready;' take care you aint too sharp." But to go back, for I go round about sometimes. Tho' Daniel Webster, said I, was like a good sportin'-dog, if I did beat round the bush, I always put up the birds. What is a happy people? If havin' enough to eat and drink, with rather a short, just a little mite and morsel too short an allowance of time to swaller it, is bein' happy, then we are so beyond doubt. If livin' in a free country like Maine, where you are compelled to drink stagnant swamp-water, but can eat opium like a Chinese, if you choose, is bein' happy, then we are a happy people. Just walk thro' the happy streets of our happy villages, and look at the men-all busy-in a hurry, thoughtful, anxious, full of business, toilin' from day dawn to night-look at the women, the dear critters, a little, just a little care-worn, timeworn, climate-worn, pretty as angels, but not "Now," said he, "at most, as it applies to you, quite so merry. Follow them in the evening, and if you get leave to go to the ball, and you may go, see where them crowds are going to; why to hear for I approbate all innocent amusements for abolition lectures, while their own free niggers young people, you would be only lucky; and in a are starvin', and are taught that stealin' is easier state where one desire is satisfied. It appears to than workin'. What the plague have they to do me," said he, and he put one leg over the other, with the affairs of the south? Or to hold comand laid his head a little back, as if he was a-goin' munion with evil spirits by means of Biology, for to lay down the law, "that that eminent man has the deuce a thing else is that of mesmeric tricks omitted another sense in which this word is pro- either? Or going to hear a fellow rave at a properly used-namely, a state of joyfulness-light- tract: d meetin', for the twelfth night, to convince heartedness-merriment, but we' won't stop to in- them how happy they ought to be, as more than quire into that. It is great presumption for the half of them, at least, are to be dammed, to a likes of me to attempt to criticise Dr. Johnson." dead sartainty? Or hear a mannish, raw-bonedPoor dear old soul, he was a wiser and modest-looking old maid, lecture on the rights of women; er man than ever the old doctor was. Fact is, and call on them to emancipate themselves from old dictionary was very fond of playin' first fiddle the bondage imposed on them, of wearing pet ticoats below their knees? If women are equal be; it ain't in natur'; it's onpossible. If I was to men, why shouldn't their dress be equal?- wrong, as a boy, in my ideas of happiness, men What right has a feller to wear a kilt only as far are only full-grown boys, and are just as wrong as as his knee, and compel his slave of a wife to I was. wear hern down to her ankle? Draw your scissors, galls, in this high cause; cut, rip, and tear away, and make short work of it. Rend your garments, and Heaven will bless them that's Inkneed. Well, if this is bein' happy, then we are a happy people." Folks must be more cheerful and light-hearted than we be to be happy. They must laugh more. Oh! I like to hear a good jolly laugh, a regular nigger larf-yagh! yagh! yagh! My brother, the doctor, who has an immense practice among the ladies, told me a very old story about this. Sais he, "Sam, cheerfulness is health, and health is happiness, as near as two things not exactly identical, can be alike. I'll tell you the secret of my practice among the ladies. Cheerfulness appears to be the proper remedy, and it is in most cases. I extort a promise of inviolable secrecy from the patient, and secure the door, for I don't want my prescription to be known ;then I bid her take off her shoes, and lie down on the sofa; and then I tickle her feet to make her laugh (for some folks are so stupid. all the good stories in the world wouldn't make them laugh.) a good, joyous laugh, not too long, for that is exhaustin,' and this repeated two or three times aday, with proper regimen, effects the cure." Yes, cheerfulness is health, the opposite, melancholy, is disease. I defy any people to be happy, when they hear nothin' from mornin' till night, when business is over, but politics and pills, representatives and lotions. When I was at Goshen the other day, I asked Dr. Carrot, how many doctors there were in the town. "One and three-quarters," said he, very gravely. Well, knowing how doctors quarrel, and undervalue each other in small places, I could hardly help laughing at the decidedly disparaging way he spoke of Dr. Parsnip, his rival, especially as there was something rather new in it. "Three-quarters of a medical man!" said I. "I suppose you mean your friend has not a regu Jar-built education, and don't deserve the name of a doctor." "Oh no, sir," said he, "I would not speak of any practitioner, however ignorant, in that way. What I mean is just this-Goshen would maintain two doctors; but quack medicines, which are sold at all the shops, take about three-quarters of the support that would otherwise be contributed to another medical man." Good, sais I to myself. A doctor and threequarters! Come, I won't forget that, and here it is. Happy! If Dr. Johnson is right, then I am right. He says happiness means a state where all our desires are satisfied. We are told the affairs of the nation are badly managed, and I believe they be; politicians have mainly done that. We are told our insides are wrong, and I believe they be; quack doctors and their medicines have mainly done that. Happy! How the plague can we be happy, with our heads unsettled by politics, and our stomachs by medicines. It can't ever I ask again, what is happiness? It ain't bein' idle, that's a fact-no idle man or woman was happy, since the world began. Eve was idle, and that's the way she got tempted, poor critter: employment gives both appetite and digestion. Duty makes pleasure doubly sweet by contrast. When the harness is off, if the work ain't too hard, a critter likes to kick up his heels. When pleasure is the business of life, it ceases to be pleasure; and when it's all labor and no play, work like an onstuffed saddle cuts into the very bone. Neither labor nor idleness has a road that leads to happiness; one has no room for the heart, and the other corrupts it. Hard work is the best of the two, for that has at all events sound sleep-the other has restless pillows and on refreshin' slumbers; one is a misfortune, the other a curse; and money ain't happiness, that's as clear as mud. There was a feller to Slickville, once called Dotey Conky, and he sartinly did look dotty, like sap off. He was always a wishin'. I used to call lumber that ain't squared down enough to cut the him Wishey Washey Dotty. "Sam," he used to say, "I wish I was rich." "So do I," I used to say. "If I had fifty thousand dollars," he said, "I wouldn't call the President my cousin." Gentle "Well," sais I, "I can do that now, poor as I be; he is ao cousin of mine, and, if he was, he'd be no credit, for he is no great shakes. men now don't set up for that office; they can't live on it." "Oh, I don't mean that," he said; "but fifty thousand dollars, Sam, only think of that; ain't it a great sum, that; it's all I should ask in this world of providence; if I had that, I should be the happiest man that ever was." "Dotty," sais I, "would it cure you of the colic? you know you suffer from that." Phoo," sais he. "Hire it, Sam," sais he, touching his nose with his fore-finger. "And manners," sais I, "could you hire that? I will tell you what it would do for you. You could get drunk every night if you liked, surround yourself with spongers, horse jockeys, and foreign counts, and go to the devil by railroad instead of one horse shay." Well, as luck would have it, he drew a prize in the lottery at New Orleans of just that sum, and in nine months he was cleaned out, and sent to the asylum. It ain't cash, then, that gains it; that's as plain as preaching. What is it, then, that confers it? "A rope," said Blowhard, as we reached the side of the "Nantucket," in with your oars, my men. Now, Mr. Slick, let's take a dose of Sarsiparilly pills.” GABRIEL'S MARRIAGE.* IN TWO CHAPEERS.-CHAPTER THE SECOND. Judas in disguise! I don't care for your secret or for you. What's that girl Rose doing here still? Why hasn't she gone home long ago? The priest's coming; we don't want strangers in the house of death. Take her back to the farm-house, and stop there with her, if you like: nobody wants you here!" "I MAY marry Rose with a clear conscience now!" There are some parts of the world, where it would be drawing no natural picture of human nature to represent a son as believing conscientiously that There was something in the manner and look of an offence against life and the laws of hospitality, the speaker, as he uttered these words, so strange, secretly committed by his father, rendered him, so sinister, so indescribably suggestive of his though innocent of all participation in it, un- meaning much more than he said, that Gabriel worthy to fulfil his engagement with his affianced felt his heart sink within him instantly; and wife. Among the simple inhabitants of Gabriel's almost at the same moment this fearful question province, however, such acuteness of conscien- forced itself irresistably on his mind-might not tious sensibility as this was no extraordinary his father have followed him to the Merchant's exception to all general rules. Ignorant and Table? Even if he had been desired to speak, superstitious as they might be, the people of he could not have spoken now, while that question Brittany practised the duties of hospitality as and the suspicion that it brought with it were devoutly as they practised the duties of the utterly destroying all the re-assuring hopes and national religion. The presence of the stranger- convictions of the morning. The mental suffering guest, rich or poor, was a sacred presence at their produced by the sudden change from pleisure to hearths. His safety was their especial charge-pain in all his thoughts, reacted on him physically. his property their especial responsibility. They He felt as if he were stifling in the air of the might be half-starved, but they were ready to cottage, in the presence of his father; and when share the last crust with him nevertheless, as Rose hurried on her walking attire, and with a they would share it with their own children. Any face which alternately flushed and turned pale outrage on the virtue of hospitality, thus born with every moment, approached the door, he and bred in the people, was viewed by them with went out with her as hastily as if he had been universal disgust, and punished by universal flying from his home. Never had the fresh air execration. This ignominy was uppermost in and the free daylight felt like heavenly and Gabriel's thoughts by the side of his grandfather's guardian influences to him until now! bed; the dread of this worst dishonor, which there was no wiping out, held him speechlessness, he could assure her of his own affection before Rose, shamed and horrified him so that he felt unworthy to look her in the face; and when the result of his search at the Merchant's Table proved the absence there of all evidence of the crime spoken of by the old man, the blessed relief, the absorbing triumph of that discovery was expressed entirely in the one thought which had pompted his first joyful words:He could marry Rose with a clear conscience, for he was the son of an honest man! When he returned to the cottage, François had not come back. Rose was astonished at the change in Gabriel's manner; even Pierre and the children remarked it. Rest and warmth had by this time so far recovered the younger brother, that he was able to give some account of the perilous adventures of the night at sea. They were still listening to the boy's narrative when François at last returned. It was now Gabriel who held out his hand, and made the first advances towards reconciliation. To his utter amazement, his father recoiled from him. The variable temper of François had evidently changed completely during his absence at the village. A settled scowl of distrust darkened his face, as he looked at his son. "I never shake hands with people who have once doubted me," he said loudly and irritably; "for I always doubt them for ever after. You are a bad son! You have suspected your father of some infamy that you dare not openly charge him with, on no other testimony than the rambling nonsence of a half-witted, dying old man. Don't speak to me! I won't hear you! An innocent man and a spy are bad company. Go and denounce me, you He could comfort Rose under his father's harsh. that no earthly influence could change, while they walked together towards the farm-house; but he could do no more. He durst not confide to her the subject that was uppermost in his mind: of all human beings she was the last to whom he could reveal the terrible secret that was festering at his heart. As soon as they got within sight of the farm-house, Gabriel stopped; and, promising to see her again soon, took leave of Rose with assumed ease in his manner and with real despair in his heart. Whatever the poor girl might think of it, he felt, at that moment, that he had not courage to face her father, and hear him talk happily and pleasantly, as his custom was, of Rose's approaching marriage. Left to himself, Gabriel wandered hither and thither over the open heath, neither knowing nor caring in what direction he turned his steps. The doubts about his father's innocence which had been dissipated by his visit to the Merchant's Table, that father's own language and manner had now revived-had even confirmed, though he dared not yet acknowledge so much to himself. It was terrible enough to be obliged to admit that the result of his morning's search was, after all, not conclusive-that the mystery was in very truth not yet cleared up. The violence of his father's last words of distrust; the extraordinary and indescribable changes in his father's manner while uttering them-what did these things mean? Guilt or innocence? Again, was it any longer reasonable to doubt the death-bed confession made by his grandfather? Was it not, on the contrary, far more probable that the old man's denial in the morning of his own words at night, had been made under the influence of a panic terror, when his moral consciousness was be wildered, and his intellectual faculties were sinking? The longer Gabriel thought of these questions, the less competent-possibly also the less willing, he felt to answer them. Should he seek advice from others wiser than he? No: not while the thousandth part of a chance remained that his father was innocent. This thought was still in his mind, when he found himself once more in sight of his home. He was still hesitating near the door, when he saw it opened cautiously. His brother Pierre looked out, and then came running towards him. "Come in, Gabriel; oh, do come in!" said the boy earnestly. "We are afraid to be alone with father. He's been beating us for talking of you." Gabriel went in. His father looked up from the hearth where he was sitting, muttered the word "Spy!" and made a gesture of contemptbut did not address a word directly to his son. The hours passed on in silence; afternoon waned into evening, and evening into night; and still he never spoke to any of his children. Soon after it was dark, he went out, and took his net with him, saying that it was better to be alone on the sea than in the house with a spy. When he returned the next morning, there was no change in him. Days passed-weeks, months even elapsed-and still, though his manner insensibly became what it used to be towards his other children, it never altered towards his eldest son. At the rare periods when they now met, except when absolutely obliged to speak, he preserved total silence in his intercourse with Gabriel. He would never take Gabriel out with him in the boat; he would never sit alone with Gabriel in the house; he would never eat a meal with Gabriel; he would never let the other children talk to him about Gabriel; and he would never hear a word in expostulation, a word in reference to anything his dead father had said or done on the night of the storm, from Gabriel himself. The young man pined and changed so that even Rose hardly knew him again, under this cruel system of domestic excommunication; under the wearing influence of the one unchanging doubt which never left him; and, more than all, under the incessant reproaches of his own conscience, aroused by the sense that he was evading a responsibility which it was his solemn, his immediate duty to undertake. But no sting of conscience, no ill treatment at home, and no self-reproaches for failing in his duty of confession, as a good Catholic, were powerful enough in their influence over Gabriel to make him disclose the secret, under the oppression of which his very life was wasting away. He knew that if he once revealed it, whether his father was ultimately proved to be guilty or innocent, there would remain a slur and a suspicion on the family, and on Rose besides from her approaching connection with it, which in their time and in their generation could never be removed. The reproach of the world is terrible even in the crowded city, where many of the dwellers in our abiding-place are strangers to us-but it is far more terrible in the country, where none near us are strangers, where all talk of us and know of us, where nothing intervenes between us and the tyranny of the evil tongue. Gabriel had not courage to face this, and dare the fearful chance of life-long ignominy-no, not even to serve the sacred interests of justice, of atonement, and of truth. While he still remained prostrated under the affliction that was wasting his energies of body and mind, Brittany was visited by a great public calamity in which all private misfortunes were overwhelmed for a while. It was now the time when the ever-gathering storm of the French Revolution had risen to its hurricane climax. Those chiefs of the new republic were now in power, whose last, worst madness it was to decree the extinction of religion and the overthrow of everything that outwardly symbolized it, through. out the whole of the country that they governed. Already this decree had been executed to the letter in and around Paris; and now the soldiers of the republic were on their way to Brittany, headed by commanders whose commission was to root out the Christian religion in the last and the surest of the strongholds still left to it in France. These men began their work in a spirit worthy of the worst of their superiors who had sent them to do it. They gutted churches, they demolished chapels, they overthrew road-side crosses whereever they found them. The terrible guillotine devoured human lives in the villages of Brittany, as it had devoured them in the streets of Paris; the musket and the sword, in highway and byeway, wreaked havoc on the people-even on women and children kneeling in the act of prayer; the priests were tracked night and day from one hiding place where they still offered up worship to another, and were killed as soon as overtaken, every atrocity was committed in every district; but the Christian religion still spread wider than the widest bloodshed; still sprang up with everrenewed vitality from under the very feet of the men whose vain fury was powerless to trample it down. Everywhere the people remained true to their faith; everywhere the priests stood firm by them in their sorest need. The executioners of the republic had been sent to make Brittany a country of apostates: they did their worst, and left it a country of martyrs. One evening while this frightful persecution was still raging, Gabriel happened to be detained unusually late at the cottage of Rose's father. He had lately spent much of his time at the farmhouse: it was his only refuge now from that place of suffering, of silence, and of secret shame, which he had once called home! Just as he had taken leave of Rose for the night, and was about to open the farm-house door, her father stopped him, and pointed to a chair in the chimney corner. "Leave us alone, my dear," said the old man to his daughter; "I want to speak to Gabriel. You can go to your mother, in the next room." The words which Père Bonan-as he was called by the neighbours-had now to say in private, were destined to lead to very unexpected events. After referring to the alteration which had appeared of late in Gabriel's manner, the old man began by asking him, sorrowfully but not suspiciously, whether he still preserved his old affection for Rose. On receiving an eager answer in the affirmative, Père Bonan then referred to the persecution still raging through the country, and to the consequent possibility that he, like others of his countrymen, might yet be called to suffer and perhaps to die for the cause of his |