tions would try us sorely. The influence of custom cannot be ignored. A boy, living at home, naturally regards his father as the ideal of manhood, whether he practises law or sells candy, and in his determination to imitate him, a wife invariably occupies the foreground in his dreams of the future. Even when he becomes a man the old habit of thought clings to him, and not from a real want alone, but from the custom, he is led to ponder over matrimonial projects. On the other hand, he is ignorant of what real bachelorhood is. The pleasures of a home, of standing in the relation of son or brother, supply to him in some degree the advantages of a wife's society; and, loth to give up such delights, he looks forward to marriage as necessary to his future happiness. Never having been thrown upon his own resources, he cannot know the charms of living alone. To view the subject fairly he should know the advantages of both states.

Let a young man leave home, called by business or study, and, having taken 'Rooms for a Single Gentleman,' learn to be a bachelor. For the first few days the dose, like other medicine, is disagreeable to be taken alone. The sweets of home have usually soothed the harshness of celibacy, but a brief boardinghouse life will teach him to swallow any thing without flinching. And, by way of illustration, let me narrate an appropriate incident. A friend of mine, not long ago, leaving home with laudable intentions of economy, sought and easily found a cheap but respectable' boarding-house. The victualler of the establishment

the relict of some lamented pastor-was unceasingly draped in memory of the departed with a dusty black collar, and wore a retrospective but benignant smile of serious joy. Rashly did our hero, notwithstanding the fact that, upon his call of inquiry, he observed, besides the smile and the collar, grasses and ambrotypes upon the mantle-piece, the 'Book of Beauty' and the 'Wreath of Roses' decking the

centre-table, three small pictures of something, suspended by a great superfluity of red cord in a triangular order, near the ceiling, and opposite them a full, very full-sized portrait of the wept-for deceased, inclosed in a varnished pine-cone-and-glove-finger frame; rashly, I say, did our hero engage a seat at her table.

Finding it im

Having awaited the first dinner with some curiosity, it was marvellously increased when, seated at the table with an aspect strongly betokening the want of food, he observed that no inquisitiveness concerning what might be the viands of his choice was manifested by landlady or waitress. possible to share in the dishes scattered over the table, from the danger of encountering the knives and forks which were vigorously. playing to and from their owners' plates and the centre of the table, he had begun to wonder, when the relict, after several spasmodic efforts with a spoon, intrusted to the waitress a plate of a mixture which he supposed to be doomed to the outside barrel. Fancy his dismay when the trusty Hebe, with a hasty, businesslike air, deposited before him the smoking pile. Upon examination and reflection he concluded that they had united the reform of Dr. Dio Lewis with the old system of courses, by putting the entire meal upon the plate at once, and having that plate large enough for every variety of food. Resolved to sustain the reputation of being a ' valiant trencher-man,' he rapidly swallowed his disgust and the plateful. Stopping to consider what dessert would relieve him most, a rapid movement of the ubiquitous serving-maid substituted a weighty quarter of an apple-pie for the débris before him. Equal to the emergency, he finished it, and-free at last-thought to cool his over-taxed frame with refreshing water-melon. He raised a tempting morsel to his lips, and lo, it was lukewarm!

On that afternoon I asked him: 'Are you pleased with your place of board

ing?' 'Yes, for I am about to change,' was the significant answer.

That novice now is an experienced boarder. He is ever amiable to the man who assumes familiarity after having once partaken of steak from the same side of the bone as himself. He most dutifully enlarges upon the atmosphere in elaborate discourses with ancient dames; he listens with a smile of interest to the most outrageous political opinions; and, to cap the climax, looks with composure upon a neighbor who conveys by means of a knife-blade both fish and ice-cream to the lowest attainable recesses of his throat.

'And are such,' you say, 'the roses of bachelor life?' No, fair lady, they are among the thorns. And our frankness should receive your favor. What think you of Thackeray's picture? 'IN tattered old slippers that toast at the

bars,

And a ragged old jacket perfumed with segars,

Away from the world and its toils and its cares,

I have been too fast let us go back. 'Can I afford it?' should follow: 'Am I ready?' 'Have I chosen?'

My business friend, he of the relict, and I have talked that over. We are both aged twenty-two. Several years hence we shall have developed, probably, into something far greater than our present state-whether in the sense of magnificent or monstrous we cannot tell. At that time we shall be able to judge with more certainty of our future life than at present..

Can we have any definite plans now? No. Therefore we are not ready to choose. 'Will not the delay fret you?' asks a buxom inquirer who married long ago at sixteen. Nothing, madam, has yet promised to mar our sepa rate felicity- and we yearn for such a darling as yourself only as every American of eight years of age longs for the Presidency, namely, in the dim futuresatisfied to believe that

'THEY also serve who stand and wait.'

stairs.'

There I sit and dream of glory transient as well as eternal. I may be a student — perhaps the reveries of my business friend across the entry have a more golden tinge - but why-if I yield for a moment and long for connubial bliss, does not my old Cicero look knowingly down from his shelf and whisper: 'Has any one a daughter? He needs money: two; more: many; still more.'* Emboldened by this gentle reminder, my board-bills, tailor's calendar, boot-records, and the masses of such literature as January brings, stare me in the face, impudently shouting: 'Should we bear these pretty autographs if we were doubled?'

'Dou

bled!' I cry. 'Nay-more than that.' CONCEAL, fond man, conceal thy mighty

smart,

Nor tell CORINNA She has fired thy heart.''

*FILIAM quis habet? pecunia est opus: duas; maore: plures; majore etiam.'

I have been visiting—who, from her morbid taste for ignition she'll get enough of brimstone by-and-by — had told me the names, the virtues, and the fortunes of all the girls within ten miles. I smiled my boarding-house smile, quoted St. Paul, and thought things which should be unutterable— but here they are.

I have the purest respect and love for true womanly character, and, when graced by culture, it commands my most sincere admiration. With this idea I enter society, the ball-room, the sociable, the family-circle, the fascinating tête-à-tête, wherever you please — we go my friend and I- and there we meet the ladies of the land. Having similar tastes, we seek the married women and those virgins of twenty-five or who, on account of the foolish notion that a woman must be speedily married, are considered on the verge of old-maidism,

'And why, pray, are not the younger ones more attractive?' Angelic miss! I'll explain.

We hear every day the assertion that the minds of girls mature so much sooner than those of boys, that a young lady of eighteen is far superior to a boy of that age. Permit me in behalf of my sex to politely doubt the truth of that statement. In the manners and customs of society- what our graceful young creature would probably express by the savoir faire, you know,' the young lady, I grant, has generally at that age the advantage. But in a mental point of view her light is pale before the ruddier masculine glow. After that age he easily acquires the ‘savoir faire,' but does she equal him in character and intellectual acquirements? Your blushing silence warns me.

Amicus and I had returned one night to our pipes and our fire after a dresscoat affair, and, as my willing ears still tinkled with a certain silvery laugh, and every puff of smoke seemed to brighten with a sweetly remembered dimple, the unfeeling fellow, throwing his ashes into the fire, exclaimed: 'Since most girls of twenty and thereabouts wilfully waste their time or don't know how to use it, and since it would e awkward to marry a woman older than myself, I am willing to wait until the young ones come to their senses and I have added more to my own.'

After softly rebuking his vehemence and rubbing that cherished dimple from my—not heart, but eye, I replied: 'So am I; but is there then some elderly Venus for whom thou dost

*Ar awful distance entertain thy grief?''

'Oh! no, but they approach nearer to my ideal.' Thus he of the former longings puts off the happy hour.

The marriage-fever past, what contentment he finds! His room is his castle- and a royal one too, with its rows of gilt-bound courtiers and their handsome pages. Wits, poets, and philosophers answer to his beck. Sitting

down to a pipe with Lord Raleigh, he commands the presence of Bacon, and at once the old noble displays the whole treasure of his mind. He turns goodhumoredly to Fuller, and the Doctor is ever ready with his genial smile. Would he even go a-fishing - dear old ‘Izaak Walton' makes no secret of the way, the time, or the place. Off he goes no one wonders or is worried at his absence. But, sure to find friends, he returns, and the whole staff of the 'Spectator' do their best for his entertainment. Must he glory still more - the great Shakspeare will not grudge him whole days and nights of acting. Thus, without hindrance, he follows his own sweet will. Call you not this happiness?

For the delights of home he substitutes the advantages of uninterrupted study. The business man has only his nights in his castle, and how valuable they are to him! But, if he returned every evening family-wards, how often would there be a certainty of no teaparty, no damsel to be escorted, no old lady to be tenderly dealt with? The dutiful evenings with the family-circle accomplished, and a week of unbroken nights promising joy, how is he tortured by the absolute necessity' of accepting an invitation or two! And where, then, is there time for reading? Ah! bachelor's quarters for me!

You may think this selfishness - but no, it is conscientious economy of time. It comes from a desire to arm one's self strongly for the combat of life. With reference to what is called societygoing, (for which employment, by the way, every available young man is esbachelor avoids much of it, it is from a teemed legitimate plunder,) if the y young determination to escape the too prevalent blunder of wishing 'to be, instead of to become.' The mere fact of 'being in society' is of little moment to himbut to be something in society is what he aims for. And who would not prefer the society of a wise man one day in a week to living with a fool the whole seven?

SALLIE MOSBY, with her acute feminine penetration, was not slow to perceive that something was amiss with the now moody proprietor of Rock Hill — that there was some intangible bar to the gay freedom of that social intercourse that had given to each day so much of its zest. Not that each day had brought him to her side for pleasant interchange of thought and fancy; but rarely one, of late, had passed in which, from some portion of his grounds, she had not received the courtesy of doffed beaver (a soft felt hat, to be literally prosaic in regard to fact) in gracious salute. But now she might tend her flower-borders from morn till noon, from noon till dewy eve, with Mr. Althorp often in view, but no token that he was aware of her proximity deigned he. At first she was disposed to attribute this sudden change of demeanor to some accidental cause which might speedily be removed; but so stringently was the new course persisted in, that she was forced to admit there must be design in its maintenance. Accepting the inexplicable intimation, she shaped her own conduct in consonance therewith. If he passed by the open window where she sat reading, she did not raise her eyes from the page claiming her perusal, until the sound of his receding steps told her she might do so without danger of being detected in the purloined glance she stole at his dark, beclouded face. She would have liked to keep out of his sight altogether,

but womanly self-respect forbade her giving him cause for suspecting that any neglect on his part had power to ruffle the smooth current of her exist

ence.

One afternoon she walked down to the dépôt, for the purpose of meeting her father and returning with him to the house. He was not in the train; but Mr. Althorp sprang out upon the platform, giving his arm to a fair-haired blonde all mirth and gayety. He was too much engrossed with his charming companion to bestow a word or a look on the chestnut-haired girl, a short distance in their rear, whose oppressed spirits gave not the faintest response to their lively sallies. It was even with a pang their light laughter smote her ear -a pang whose grievous thrill she might have been spared, had she but known that her supposed rival was none other than Mr. Althorp's niece, Jenny Western, come on from New-York to spend her vacation with her uncles.

Next day Mr. Althorp gave a family party in honor of his young lady guest. Romping, frolicsome boys and girls, with youths and maidens in scarce less exuberant moods, Miss Mosby saw, with an oppressive sense of isolation very nearly amounting to actual pain, scattered about the lawn; while groups of their elders quietly lounged in the limetrees' shade. But wherever the host was to be seen, flitted near his fairhaired companion of the previous day. Grown desperate at last, poor Sallie shut herself up in her own room, to shun

the sight she could not view with composure.

There was a ring at the front-door bell. A card was handed her.

'Buckwood Lee' -'tell him I will be down in a moment, Abby.'

She paused only long enough to smooth the lines in her face to an expression better befitting the occasion, before descending to welcome her guest.

Smarting under a sense of unmerited neglect, she unconsciously extended to the caller, who relieved the tedium of her lonely hours, a greeting of unusual warmth and cordiality, exerting herself with unwearied vivacity for his entertainment. She was wholly unaware that he was a visitor at their neighbor's, until she saw him join Mr. Althorp and the little groups surrounding him. His brothers, with the juvenile corps, left early in the evening, the tender years of the younger members of the party precluding late hours.

Mr. Lee was to remain for the night; and when host and guest, segars in hand, made their way to the smokingroom, it was for a confidential interview the latter was far from anticipating.

'I saw you down at Mosby's this afternoon, Cousin Buck. I did not know you were acquainted with him.' Neither am I; it was his daughter on whom I had the pleasure of calling. I met her for the first time in town last winter, at a wedding reception, where she was bride's-maid and I one of the ushers. She seems a very nice sort of person, so free from art and affectation.'

'Don't be too sure of appearances, where a woman is concerned, Cousin Buck. "T is the perfection of art to conceal art; and in this, I grant you, Miss Mosby succeeds to a marvel.'

'What do you mean?'

'Before answering your question-for I do not give my confidence unless you agree to aid me in carrying out a plan I am firmly bent on accomplishing-I will name the price I offer for your assistance.'

'Name it, then, without going through the circumlocution office.'

'You want a majorate in the battalion at present recruiting for service.'

'Most certainly I do; I would throw up my clerkship to-morrow if I was sure of a major's commission. I will not enlist as a private, to be commanded by stripling superiors in rank, who would be sure to gall that stubborn Althorp pride of mine into some sort of an outbreak, punishable, as a guard-house of fence, at the very lightest, and at worst, by a trip to the Dry Tortugas. But, how can you obtain a commission for me?'

'Never mind the how; I tell you it shall be forthcoming, if you accede to the plan I am about to propose, and I am a man of my word. Money and influence often win the race in a contest with ability, as you well know.'

'You are pleased to be sarcastic, John Peter; but I overlook the implication your words convey in consideration of the cause that prompted them. Now, what is it that you require of me?'

A dark gleam kindled in Mr. Althorp's eyes, and a heavy flush rose to his cheek, as he replied in low, determined tones:

'Only to break the heart, if she has got one, of the vain, selfish, calculating coquette on whom you called this afternoon.'

Buckwood Lee actually stared with amazement in the face of the speaker, laying down his lighted segar, and not resuming it until the smell of burning woollen betrayed the mischief done to the table-cover.

'Break her heart! how, in the name of all that is whimsical, am I to set about such a job as that?'

'Don't be absurd, Buck. You, an accomplished lady-killer, used to whispering soft nothings, and writing sonnets to your mistress's eyebrow, to ask such a question of a plain man like me, who never yet made a noodle of himself by dedicating his behaviors to love, as Shakspeare has it.'