Reverently and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again
the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may I not lack a
good angel to remind me of its solace, even if he comes in the shape of
a Barrington beggar.






THE TRAINING.

"Send for the milingtary."
NOAH CLAYPOLE in Oliver Twist.

WHAT'S now in the wind? Sounds of distant music float in at my window
on this still October air. Hurrying drum-beat, shrill fife-tones,
wailing bugle-notes, and, by way of accompaniment, hurrahs from the
urchins on the crowded sidewalks. Here come the citizen-soldiers, each
martial foot beating up the mud of yesterday's storm with the slow,
regular, up-and-down movement of an old-fashioned churn-dasher. Keeping
time with the feet below, some threescore of plumed heads bob solemnly
beneath me. Slant sunshine glitters on polished gun-barrels and
tinselled uniform. Gravely and soberly they pass on, as if duly
impressed with a sense of the deep responsibility of their position as
self-constituted defenders of the world's last hope,--the United States
of America, and possibly Texas. They look out with honest, citizen
faces under their leathern visors (their ferocity being mostly the work
of the tailor and tinker), and, I doubt not, are at this moment as
innocent of bloodthirstiness as yonder worthy tiller of the Tewksbury