yesterday, when life settles darkly down upon us and we doubt whether
to call ourselves young any more,--then it is good to steal away from
the society of bearded men, and even of gentler woman, and spend an
hour or two with children. After drinking from those fountains of
still fresh existence we shall return into the crowd, as I do now, to
struggle onward and do our part in life--perhaps as fervently as ever,
but for a time with a kinder and purer heart and a spirit more lightly
wise. All this by thy sweet magic, dear little Annie!




WAKEFIELD.


In some old magazine or newspaper I recollect a story, told as truth,
of a man--let us call him Wakefield--who absented himself for a long
time from his wife. The fact, thus abstractedly stated, is not very
uncommon, nor, without a proper distinction of circumstances, to be
condemned either as naughty or nonsensical. Howbeit, this, though far
from the most aggravated, is perhaps the strangest instance on record
of marital delinquency, and, moreover, as remarkable a freak as may be
found in the whole list of human oddities. The wedded couple lived in
London. The man, under pretence of going a journey, took lodgings in
the next street to his own house, and there, unheard of by his wife or
friends and without the shadow of a reason for such self-banishment,
dwelt upward of twenty years. During that period he beheld his home
every day, and frequently the forlorn Mrs. Wakefield. And after so
great a gap in his matrimonial felicity--when his death was reckoned
certain, his estate settled, his name dismissed from memory and his