ing and a little seeing be all very well; but there are other senses which you have forgot, Jacob. Now one I takes to be the very best of the bunch, is smoking."

"I never heard that was a sense," replied I, laughing.

"Then you hav'n't half finished your education, Jacob."

"Are reading and writing senses, father ?" inquired Mary.

"To be sure they be, girl; for without sense you can't read and write; and rowing be a sense just as well; and there be many other senses; but, in my opinion, most of the senses be nonsense, and only lead to mischief."

66

Jacob," said Mary, whispering to my ear,

"isn't loving a sense?"

66

No, that's nonsense,” replied I.

"Well, then," replied she, "I agree with

my father, that nonsense is better than sense;

but still I don't see why I should not learn to

read and write, father."

"I've lived all my life without it, and never

felt the want of it--why can't you?"

"Because I do feel the want of it."

"So you may, but they leads to no good. Look at these fellows at the Feathers, all were happy enough before Jim Holder, who's a scholar, came among them, and now since he reads to them, they do nothing but grumble, and growl, and talk about I don't know what-corn laws, and taxes, and liberty, and all other nonsense. Now what could you do more than you do now, if you larnt to read and write?"

"I could amuse myself when I've nothing to do, father, when you and Jacob are away. I often sit down, after I've done all my work, and think what I shall do next, and at last I look out of the window and make faces at people, because I've nothing better to do. Now, fa

ther, you must let him learn me to read and

write."

"Well, Mary, if you will, you will; but recollect, don't blame me for it-it must be all on your own head, and not on my conscience. I've lived some forty or fifty years in this world, and all my bad luck has been owing to having too much senses, and all my good luck to getting rid of them."

"I wish you would tell me how that came to pass," said I; "I should like to hear it very much, and it will be a lesson to Mary."

"Well, I don't care if I do, Jacob, only I must light my pipe first; and, Mary, do you go for a pot o' beer."

"Let Jacob

go, father. I mean him to run

all my errands now."

"You mustn't order Jacob, Mary."

"No, no-I wouldn't think of ordering him,

but I know he will do it-won't you, Jacob ?"

"Yes, with pleasure," replied I.

66

Well, with all my heart, provided it be all for love," said Stapleton.

"Of course all for love," replied Mary, looking at me," or Latin-which, Jacob ?"

"What's Latin ?" said her father.

"Oh! that's a new sense Jacob has been showing me something of, which, like many others, proved to be nonsense."

I went for the beer, and when I returned, found the fire burning brightly, and a strong sense of smoking from old Stapleton's pipe. He puffed once or twice more, and then commenced his history as follows:

"I can't exactly say when I were born, nor where," said old Stapleton, taking his pipe out of his mouth, "because I never axed either father or mother, and they never told me, because why, I never did ax, and that be all agreeable to human natur." Here Stapleton

paused, and took three whiffs of his pipe. "I recollects when I was a little brat about two foot nothing, mother used to whack me all day long, and I used to cry in proportion. Father used to cry shame, and then mother would fly at him he would whack she; she would up with her apron in one corner and cry, while I did the same with my pinbefore in another: all that was nothing but human natur." [A pause, and six or seven whiffs of the pipe.]

"I was sent to a school at a penny a week, to keep me out of the way, and out of mischief. I larnt nothing but to sit still on the form and hold my tongue, and so I used to amuse myself twiddling my thumbs, and looking at the flies as they buzzed about the room in the summer time, and in the winter, 'cause there was no flies of no sort, I used to watch the old missus a knitting of stockings, and think how soon the time would come when I should go