little village.

The old, old story! how pat it comes in! How could it have failed to
come in, when the talk is of birds?

EDWARD C. BRUCE.




THE FERRYMAN'S FEE.

I.


"I am going," said the professor to his friend Miss Eldridge, "to marry
a young woman whose mind I can mould."

Somebody was uncharitable enough to say that he couldn't possibly make
it any mouldier than his own. This was a slander. In the high dry Greek
atmosphere which surrounded and enclosed his mind, mould, which requires
dampness before it can exist, was an impossibility.

When an engagement is announced, it is almost invariably followed by one
question, with a variable termination. The dear five hundred friends
exclaim, with uplifted hands,--

"What could have possessed him," or "her"?

In the present case the latter termination was adopted, with but one