Will you pleas to enclose the 100 dollars in an envelope, so that the little boy wont loose it: the little dog was too years old the first of May: and my babey too the 24 of April, they have always ben together and he is verey intelegent indead and you can learn him eneything you would wish to fealing asuared he will receve everey kindness you have the best wishes of Mrs. Hattie ——.
Perhaps it is well to add, the "100" means ten. The hero is a black Skye, long-haired, plume-tailed and soft-eyed. What his views were upon removal from the back alley of his youth to a well-appointed though by no means luxurious home he never said, but his investigation was comically thorough, winding up in dumb amaze at the discovery of himself in a long mirror. His experience of feminine humanity being limited to the variety that rolls its sleeves above its elbows and comports itself accordingly, he bitterly resented good clothes, transferred his affections to the housemaids, and only much coaxing and much sugar could win his heart for his new mistress.
"The little boy" had dubbed him "Penny," which hardly suited his silken attire and his little haughty, imperious ways; so, though the children will still call him "Penny-wise" and "Four Farthings," the mistress finds nothing less than "Pendennis" due to his dignity.—C.B.M.
OUR NEW VISITORS.
I should like to have Mr. Burroughs or some of our naturalists write one of their pleasant papers and explain the mystery of the wood-thrush's advent in our gardens and upon our lawns. Until a year ago the wood-thrush was not one of the birds which ever raised its note in our pleasure-grounds. We heard them in the woods, and looked at them, when we intruded upon their privacy, with that sort of shyness with which we watch strangers. We knew their "wood-notes wild," and admired their plumage, but they did not inspire the same feeling as their cousin the robin. But a year ago all at once here was the thrush. Nobody could tell when he came, how he came or why he came. It seemed an accident, for there was but one pair: it was as if through innocence or ignorance, instead of building their nests in their old chosen haunts, they had wandered away and lost themselves in the spacious grounds of a gentleman's country-seat. They had no dismay, no doubts, however: they took possession of the lawn with the utmost boldness. They were rarely out of sight, hopping from morning until night about the turf, flying from tree to tree with their impulsive movements, more graceful than the robins. They were never silent, uttering perpetually their mellow flute-like cry and singing their simple but ecstatic melody.
That was last year; and this year, 1880, the thrushes are everywhere in this Connecticut village by the Sound. Their orange-and-tawny backs gleam in the sunshine from morning until night. There are numbers of them. Their manners are very marked. They have quite the air of conquerors. All the other birds yield them precedence, and they positively domineer over the pugnacious little English sparrow, who is content to keep in the background and watch his chance when feeding-time comes.
And of all the curious things about them, what seems most inexplicable is their tameness. They have no mistrust, but eye you with an intelligent, knowing look while bringing their young to feed within half a dozen feet of you. They perch on the croquet-arches in the midst of a noisy game. They sing directly over your head with the utmost spirit and vivacity, hardly ceasing all the forenoon, and again bursting out toward evening and maintaining their song until every other bird's lay is hushed in the twilight. White of Selborne would have delighted in such a freak on the part of these pretty gay strangers, who have left secluded swampy haunts, the deep dells where the blackberries twine and the daisies and clover blossom, for our close-cut lawns and elm- and willow-shaded nooks.—A.T.
LITERATURE OF THE DAY.
Alexander Pope. By Leslie Stephen. (English Men-of-Letters Series.) New
York: Harper & Brothers.
The interest of this series, which increases rather than diminishes—as one might have feared would be the case—with each succeeding volume, lies very much in the fact that the list of writers, almost as long and varied as that of the subjects, is a representative one. It comprises men who have won distinction in different departments—as novelists, historians, scholars, scientific expounders—but who here meet in the common field of biographical criticism and work together under the same limitations and conditions. Hence their performances give us not so much a measure of their individual powers as of the tone of thought and intellectual depth of the class to which they belong. However diverse their abilities and special fields of observation or research, their general range of knowledge, methods of study and ideas of life are very much the same. They are collectively "men of culture," as the writers of Queen Anne's time were "wits," and it is the qualities associated with that term, rather than any distinct gifts or characteristics, that are here called into play. Mr. Trollope's Thackeray was perhaps an exception—a black spot on the otherwise immaculate whiteness. In a different way the general effect would have been still more seriously impaired if Mr. Ruskin's co-operation had been invited. The outcroppings of a vulgar egotism might indicate a substratum necessary to be taken into account, but it would have been a clear loss of labor to follow the leadings of any eccentric vein. One might wonder at the absence of Mr. Matthew Arnold, the high priest of culture; but we have to remember that Mr. Arnold is solicitous to stand apart, that he holds up ideals which he is careful to inform us are not those of his time, and that he is fastidious in selecting a point of view where he cannot be jostled, with perspectives to which no vision but his own can accommodate itself. His culture may represent that of the future, but certainly does not typify that of the present.