"Very true," said Lucy. She declared that she never should think of talking to a drunken coachman or postillion, but she hoped that she never should be driven by

one.

In which hope her mother joined her. "Lucy, my dear," said she, "when I was young was afraid in a carriage, and I will tell you how I was cured."

66

I

How, mamma?"

"I was cured of my fear for myself by a greater fear for another person. I used to be sent out airing with a lady, who had lost the use of her limbs, and I was so much afraid for her, that it took my attention away from myself. She was very cowardly; I was taken up in quieting her apprehensions; and I saw, that nine times in ten, when she was alarmed, there was no cause for fear. This encouraged me the next time, and so on: besides the feeling, that if there were any danger I must act for her, was a motive to me to keep my senses and presence of mind."

"As to that last," said Lucy, "I think, at least I fear, that it would have had a contrary effect upon me, and that I should have been ten times more afraid with the helpless person in the carriage.”

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No," said Harry, "I think I should have felt as my mother did."

"What stops us? What is the matter," said Lucy.

"Matter! nothing in the world, my dear," said Harry, laughing.

66

Only we

are stopping till the turnpike gate is opened, and till this old man, with a lantern, has fumbled the key into the lock."

Lucy joined in his laugh, and said, af

66

terwards, Laughing is very good for curing people of being afraid foolishly; for when you laugh, Harry, I know that there is no danger, or you could not be so merry. And now-it is very extraordinary-but I am no more afraid than you are, Harry. I will prove it to you. I will think of any thing you please. I can cap verses with if you will."

you,

No, thank you, not yet. I do not know enough to cap with you yet, my dear. The little that I know is from Shakspeare, and that is blank verse, which will not do for capping."

"But it will do for repeating," said Lucy; " and I wish you would repeat some of the quarrel of Brutus and Cassius, which we read together."

"I will try," said Harry; "where shall I begin?"

"What! shall one of us,

That struck the foremost man of all this world,
But for supporting robbers, shall we now
Contaminate our fingers with base bribes ?"

Harry repeated this as if he liked it, and went on through all Brutus's part of the quarrel. He said he could not forget any of this, because he felt it. He admired Brutus, and Lucy pitied Cassius. His mother observed, that he liked dramatic poetry better than descriptive. Lucy, however,

thought some descriptive poetry was beautiful, and repeated to him the description of Queen Mab and her chariot of the hazel nut, made by the joiner squirrel, “time out of mind the fairies' coachmaker." This Harry liked well. Also some of the fairies in the "Midsummmer Night's Dream," who - 66 light their tapers at the fiery glow-worms' eyes." And Harry admired Ariel in the " Tempest," whose business

it is

"To tread the ooze of the salt deep;

To run upon the sharp wind of the north;
To dive into the fire, or ride on the curled clouds,
Or put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.'

And he could conceive delicate Ariel's pleasure in killing the canker in the rose buds, flying on the bat's back, or lying in a cowslip's bell. But for Pope's elegant Ariel, and the "fifty chosen nymphs of special note" he cared but little. He well knew that his mother admired them, but he was too sturdily honest to affect admiration which he did not feel. He thought it was his fault.

His mother told him, that perhaps he would like them hereafter, and that in the meanwhile he need not despair of his own taste for poetry.

Harry observed how much more easy he found it to learn lines which he understood, than to get by heart lists of names. He said, that he recollected having read in Baron Trenck's Life, that when the King of Prussia wanted to try Trenck's memory, he gave him to learn by rote a list of fifty strange names of soldiers in a regiment. Trenck learned them quickly.

"I am glad," said Harry, "that I was not in his place, for his majesty would have thought me quite a dunce, and would have decided that I had no memory. It is much more difficult to learn nonsense than sense," continued Harry: "there is something in sense to help one out."

"Unless it be droll nonsense," said Lucy; "but when it is droll, the diversion helps me to remember."

Harry doubted even this.