thread. In a moment of unguarded irony, I informed him that unity would at least have been preserved if the buttons were removed altogether. He smiled sadly and went away. I thought I had

hurt his feelings, until the next week, when he brought me my shirts with a look of intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally erased. At another time, to guard against his general disposition to carry off anything as soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested him to always wait until he saw me. Coming home late one evening, I found the household in great consternation over an immovable Celestial, who had remained seated on the front door-step during the day, sad and submissive, firm, but also patient, and only betraying any animation or token of his mission when he saw me coming.

This same Chinaman evinced some evidences of regard for a little girl in the family, who, in her turn, reposed such faith in his intellectual qualities as to present him with a preternaturally uninteresting Sunday-school book, her own property. This book John made a point of carrying ostentatiously with him in his weekly visits. It appeared, usually, on the top of the clean clothes, and was sometimes painfully clasped outside of the big bundle of soiled linen. Whether John believed he unconsciously imbibed some spiritual life through its pasteboard cover, as the Prince in the "Arabian Nights" imbibed the medicine through the handle of the mallet, or whether he wished to exhibit a due sense of gratitude, or whether he had n't any pockets, I have never been able to ascertain.

In his turn, he would sometimes cut marvelous

imitation roses from carrots for his little friend. I am inclined to think that the few roses strewn in John's path were such scentless imitations. The thorns only were real. From the persecutions of the young and old of a certain class, his life was a torment. I don't know what was the exact philosophy that Confucius taught, but it is to be hoped that poor John, in his persecution, is still able to detect the conscious hate and fear with which inferiority always regards the possibility of even-handed justice, and which is the key-note to the vulgar clamor about servile and degraded races. BRET HARTE.

Spell and pronounce : — aggregate, servile, irony, adjustment, extraordinary, spasm, Confucius, brocade, attribute, blouse, delusively, clamor, ascertain, erased, inferiority, and evinced.

Synonyms.-adjustment—suiting; fitting; arrangement; regulation; settlement. animation-liveliness; vivacity; spirit; airiness; buoyancy; sprightliness; promptitude. submissive - obedient; compliant; yielding; obsequious: subservient; humble; modest; passive. consternation—alarm; horror; amazement; surprise; astonishment; wonder; perturbation.

THE LAST HOURS OF LITTLE PAUL DOMBEY.

Paul had never risen from his little bed. He lay there, listening to the noises of the street, quite tranquilly; not caring much how the time went, but watching everything about him with observing eyes.

When the sunbeams struck into his room through the rustling blinds, and quivered on the opposite wall like golden water, he knew that evening was coming on, and that the sky was red and beautiful. As the reflection died away, and the gloom went creeping up the wall, he watched it deepen, deepen, deepen into night. Then he thought how the long streets were dotted with lamps, and how the peaceful stars were shining overhead. His fancy had a strange tendency to wander to the river, which he knew was flowing through the great city; and now he thought how black it was, and how deep it would look, reflecting the hosts of stars, and more than all, how steadily it rolled away to meet the sea.

As it grew later in the night, and footsteps in the street became so rare that he could hear them coming, count them as they passed, and lose them in the distance, he would lie and watch the manycolored ring about the candle, and wait patiently for day. His only trouble was the swift and rapid river. He felt forced, sometimes, to try to stop it,— to stem it with his childish hands, or choke its way with sand,-and when he saw it coming on, resistless, he cried out! But a word from Florence, who was always at his side, restored him to himself; and leaning his poor head upon her breast, he told Floy of his dream, and smiled.

When day began to dawn again, he watched for the sun; and when its cheerful light began to sparkle in the room, he pictured to himself-he pictured! he saw-the high church-towers rising up into the morning sky, the town reviving, waking, starting into life once more, the river glistening as it rolled (but rolling fast as ever), and the

country bright with dew. Familiar sounds and cries came by degrees into the street below; the servants in the house were roused and busy; faces looked in at the door, and voices asked his attendants softly how he was. Paul always answered for himself, "I am better. I am a great deal better, thank you! Tell papa so!"

By little and little, he got tired of the bustle of the day and the noise of carriages and carts, people passing and repassing; and would fall asleep, or be troubled with a restless and uneasy sense again-the child could hardly tell whether this were in his sleeping or in his waking momentsof that rushing river. "Why will it never stop, Floy?" he would sometimes ask her. "It is bearing me away, I think!"

But Floy could always soothe and reassure him; and his daily delight was to make her lay her head down on the pillow, and take some rest.

“You are always watching me, Floy. Let me watch you, now!" They would prop him up with cushions in a corner of his bed, and there he would recline the while she lay beside him; bending forward oftentimes to kiss her, and whispering to those who were near that she was tired, and how she had sat up so many nights beside him.

Thus the flush of the day, in its heat and light, would gradually decline; and again the golden water would be dancing on the wall.

He was visited by as many as three grave doctors,-they used to assemble down-stairs, and come up together,-and the room was so quiet, and Paul was so observant of them (though he never asked of anybody what they said), that he even knew the difference in the sound of their watches. But his

interest centered in Sir Parker Peps, who always took his seat on the side of the bed. For Paul had heard them say long ago, that that gentleman had been with his mamma when she clasped Florence in her arms and died. And he could not forget it now. He liked him for it. He was not afraid.

Paul closed his eyes with those words and fell asleep. When he awoke, the sun was high, and the broad day was clear and warm. He lay a little, looking at the windows, which were open, and the curtains rustling in the air, and waving to and fro: then he said, "Floy, is it to-morrow? Is she come?"

Some one seemed to go in quest of her. Perhaps it was Susan. Paul thought he heard her telling him, when he had closed his eyes again, that she would soon be back; but he did not open them to see. She kept her word-perhaps she had never been away-but the next thing that happened was a noise of footsteps on the stairs, and then Paul woke-woke mind and body-and sat upright in his bed. He saw them now about him. There was no gray mist before them, as there had been sometimes in the night. He knew them every one, and called them by their names.

"And who is this? Is this my old nurse?" said the child, regarding, with a radiant smile, a figure coming in.

Yes, yes. No other stranger would have shed those tears at the sight of him, and called him her dear boy, her pretty boy, her own poor blighted child. No other woman would have stooped down by his bed, and taken up his wasted hand, and put it to her lips and breast, as one who had some right to fondle it. No other woman