But at last Poll became so delirious, and the | paleness swept across her face. She put up her

danger to her brain so great, that every bit of
her splendid hair was shorn, and at last shaved
off, and the redundant tresses laid away in a
drawer, perhaps-as Ruth thought-to be all
Sam should find when he came back from China. |
Days and weeks passed away. November be-
came December, and yet Poll wrestled with the
death that impended over her; for though the
fever was at length mastered and abated, she
was left in a state of infantile weakness, and
it required all Ruth's most faithful care to
keep her in life. Her mind, too, seemed feeble
as her body; she remembered nothing, cared
for nothing, but took her food and tonics, and
dozed away the days. But by the middle of
January she began to brighten, to say a few
weak words, though evidently Ruth and her fa-
ther were her only memories; in her delirium
she had raved about Sam and her red hair, re-
gretted it, wept over it, and caressed it by turns,
till even Adeline felt painful twinges of repent-
ance for the pain she had given the poor child
in times past.
But now she never mentioned
Sam's name, or alluded to her hair, and though
there was a letter carefully laid away in Ruth's
drawer waiting to be asked for, it seemed as if
Poll had forgotten-but she only slept.

One warm day in February she sat up by her window, and her eye fell on the bare branches of the little rose-tree; something stirred in her brain, a moment's painful struggle to catch the fleeting thought one moment of that exquisitely painful wandering and groping darkness that assails the weak will and the faded memory, and Poll remembered. Ruth saw the keen agony of look that pierced her vague eyes and died out, almost as quickly to renew its spark, the flushing and paling cheek, the tremulous lips, till those eyes brightened into certainty, and her cheek burned with a blush and a smile at once, and she spoke.

"Ruth," said she, "have you heard any thing from Sam?"

"Yes," said Ruth, quietly, stepping to her drawer for the letter, which she handed to Poll. Perhaps even you, refined and well-educated reader, may forgive its spelling and grammar if I venture to transcribe it over her shoulder: At sea. August 17th

deer Poll

This is to say I am alive And well and Hoap you enjoy the saim blesing. we wayed Anker the first of June acording to orders, and maid a Steddy run acrost the atlantick till we stood off Sow-cast for the cape. I now rite in hops of a Vesel pasing bye I rite for to tell you agane How much I keep a strate Course in my mind for the Port where you be Poll. my deer I think of you evry Day and likewise when I keep Watch. I seem somehow to sight the old Cabbin, and the beach-gras a shinin' all round you, where you lay when I ketched you up. deer I am no grate fist at ritin, but I want for to hev you know that I aint

One of that sort o' Craft that shifts their flaggs in knew Places. I be as trew to my bearin's as our figger-head and I allays rekollects your Bewtiful hare when I see the Risin Sun acrost the sea. So no more at Pressent from your loving frend to Command

SAM BENT

Tears of pleasure filled Poll's eyes as she read, but when she came to the last line a sudden

hand gropingly to her head-it was smooth and soft as a mouse-skin. "Ruth!" said she, eagerly, "where is it?"

Ruth had watched her, and answered as if to a more definite question—“We had to cut it off when you were so sick, Poll; you wouldn't have got well without."

She sat up and A little strataroom Poll got

Poll lay back in her chair, faint and sick. She said nothing at first; but the slow, hot tears rolled down her cheeks, and her wan face gathered a look of pain that was sad to see: the thought that smote her so bitterly was all of Sam; what would he say? Her hair, that was "the prettiest thing about her," that he thought of so far away, that he would want to see. How she must look! And with that came a strange desire to see herself. asked Ruth to get her some tea. gem only; for when she left the up and tottered to the glass that hung by the window. Poor Poll! the spectacle was not pleasant. A thin white face, eyes bigger than ever, and the small head in that ugly transition from no hair, when any color of a coming crop seems only slaty gray from its extreme shortness. Poll turned away; she was altogether humiliated. Surely she might give up Sam now and forever, for the only attraction she had possessed was gone, and she was actually repulsive besides. She was too weak to be passionately disappointed, but she laid herself on the bed like a grieved and tired child and cried herself to sleep.

A vainer or a more selfish woman might have fretted and brooded over her trouble till the fever had returned with fatal consequences; but Poll was too absorbed in Sam and his future to give so much thought to her own. She wept bitterly for days over her loss-and his; but from the first accepted it as a fact that Sam could not love her when he came back, and tried earnestly to accustom herself to the belief. And she succeeded very well till it occurred to her one day that he would marry somebody else, perhaps Adeline, and then Poll found she had not sounded her trouble before: she could no more face that thought than she could the looking-glass, which she had never looked into from that day when she first saw herself. But the weeks did not stop to look at her or to pity Sam Bent.

Spring came stealing on with steady advance, and Poll's naturally tenacious constitution revived in the soft airs and breezes. Her best consolation was her old out-of-door haunts; and though she was now habitually sad and silent, she did not mope or cry-though Ruth wondered why she withdrew herself more and more from her housekeeping duties, and even remonstrated with her to no effect, except saddening her more deeply or bringing about a brief spasm of effort.

But Poll might have looked into the glass by the middle of May with good effect-the long fever had either renovated some torpid function of her skin, or the long confinement to the house softened and soothed its habitual inflammation: for now it was smooth and fair as a child's, and

either cheek; its tender, panting mouth just parted over little snow-white teeth; its great brown eyes moist and bright with the tears they had but just shed; and a head wreathed with silky ringlets whose coils caught the light with a bronze lustre as lovely as rare: the blue check dress and white ruffle identified her.

"Why!" said Poll, with a little start. "You mean to say that a'n't hansum?" triumphantly asked Sam.

every breeze brought to it a light bloom like a | asked her to look. Oh what a pretty vision was wild-rose petal; her lips were reddened with there! A fair, sweet face, with a deep glow on healthy crimson, and her broad white brow had lost its burned and tanned look, for she had now to keep on her sun-bonnet, missing the heavy covering of her hair. Yet, to tell the truth, its loss was an embellishment, for her head was covered now with thick soft rings and curls of the richest chestnut, glossy as the new skin of that nut and fine as floss: nothing prettier could have crowned her forehead, and shaded so beautifully with her eyes of the same tint, a shade darker, but softened and deepened by suffering and emotion. There was nobody to tell Poll all this. Ruth was glad her red hair had gone; but she did not say so for fear of hurting her feelings, and old Abe did not understand any beauty but the type of sturdy figures, red cheeks, and black eyes-a type rather forced on his admiration by repetition, till now he preferred it from habit. Adeline had been gone since March to see Nancy at Madison, and nobody ever came to the hut whom Poll was willing to see now; so she kept by herself, and waited with sad patience for Sam's coming, at she might tell him what she expected and have it over with.

But one rarely does just what they mean to do beforehand; and the Flying Cloud was safe in New York without Poll's hearing of her arrival for two days, and Poll herself, sitting in her low chair reading, was "taken all aback," as her father said, one bright June morning, by the heavy "thud" of a box set down on the sill of the door, and the quick jump of a man over it. "Why, Poll!" said Sam, after the first unresisted kissing was over, holding her off to look at her, "I shouldn't ha' known you!"

"No, I guess not!" said Poll, with quivering lips. "My hair is all gone, and-and Sam, I look so I know—"

"I didn't know I looked like that," was the naïve answer.

"Don't you never look in the glass?" returned he.

"I haven't since I was sick, but once," said Poll, dropping her head.

"Here's a reef!" said Sam, light beginning to dawn on his mind. "Well, I am some took aback myself. I don't think a poor sea-farin' man like me had oughter ask sech a three-decker to marry him! Poll, I b'lieve I must haul down my flag; I can't expect you to keer for me now."

Poll turned round and looked at him; there was no mistaking the sparkle of that deep gray eye. Poll dropped her head on his shoulder. She could hear the light laughter he had repressed now.

"Oh, Sam," said she, nestling still closer to his check, "I'm so glad!"

The black lacker dressing-case, somewhat worn and tarnished, stands now in the "spare chamber" of a tiny gray house at the foot of Squamkeag Light-house; for Ben Gould was drowned, and Sam got his situation. In the upper drawer of the pretty luxury a mass of red hair, long and wavy, is coiled away, and tied up with an Indian ribbon that smells of sandal-wood; but Poll Jennings's hair has grown again down to the hem of her dress, and its beautiful coil is as bright as ever, though no longer red. Sam offers to get a divorce, now and then, on account of his "humliness;" but at the last advices his offer was not yet accepted-"on account of the children," I- Poll demurely says.

"Look so!" interrupted Sam; "I guess you do! why you've ben and got made over!"

"Oh, Sam, don't!" said she. Somehow it was harder to bear than she had expected, and the tears would come as she went on-"I know I am as humbly as a crab, but I sha'n't feel hard about you, Sam. I know you can't love me. I-" Here came a big sob.

"Jethunderation!" roared Sam, getting up his biggest expletive, "you humbly? You're handsomer 'n a picture this minnit; why Poll!" "Sam!" said she, indignantly, "don't! Do you think I don't know ?"

"Yes I do," said Sam. "Hold hard a bit!" With which little exhortation he put her down, and went to his chest. Out of its capacious interior he drew a great bundle, done up in folds of canvas, wads of cotton, and wrappings of Chinese paper, which at last peeled off under his clumsy fingers, and displayed the prettiest little dressing-case of black lacker, studded with gold flowers and butterflies-its four drawers surmounted by an oval mirror in a frame of the same material. Sam triumphantly hoisted the whole of the affair on the top of the bureau, and catching up Poll in his arms, held her up and

TOO SENSITIVE.

IN going through a street in Boston not long

since, we heard one young woman say to another as we passed, "Ain't you too sensitive?" The young woman that spoke was healthy, strong, and handsome: the young woman spoken to was sickly, weak, and plain. The contrast was so striking that, though we walked at a rapid pace, it was by one glance stamped upon our mind. The words also deeply impressed us, set our brain to work, and kept us long a thinking. As we walked we mused. "And thus," we murmured to ourselves, "the powerful and the favored treat the complainings of the feeble and the unfavored: thus the successful listen to the grumblings of the disappointed and the unfortunate." The more we reflected the more import did the

graceful and easy in pageantry and ceremonial, when, possibly, torture almost to madness was concealed; and she would talk learnedly with scholars and philosophers, and in victory over pain be truly grander than they in their highest speculations.

of all, a wife bears, with long-suffering patience, amuse a brutal husband, help to do the real the evil inflicted on her by a cruel or unprinci- government of the empire, preside at Court, be pled husband; or a husband comes to infamy and ruin by indulging the follies of a dissipated wife. Some of these victims get approval from a mawkish morality, and others of them get pity from a mawkish sympathy; and we know not which is the most offensive to honest and healthy feeling the mawkish morality of the feeble ser- Examples may also be in which the source of mon, or the mawkish sympathy of the trashy a troubled or disordered life is hidden from the novel. In the romance of "Shirley" there is a victim himself. He is censured as eccentric, grand and vigorous passage of eloquence, in unsteady, or immoral-as wasteful, improvident, which bold and independent Charlotte denounces prodigal: if he is capable of reflection, he adin her own fearless and tranchant way this in-mits the accusation, and is miserable without besincere moralism of caring nothing for one's self, ing repentant; if not reflective, he runs his caand caring all for others. The doctrine is loud-reer, and at last the secret is revealed-which sounding, and like all loud-sound, it most belongs he or others had never suspected-some inscrutato hollow or windy instruments. The selfish ble disease, that as a poisoned fountain effused vociferously preach it; only the unselfish silent- its morbidness through will, thought, desire, and ly practice it. But honest care for one's self is deed. We read not long since of such a case in often the best and truest care for others. Health a letter from Spiridion-the Parisian correspondand competence, depending largely on temper- ent of the Boston Traveller. He pathetically ance and thrift, are essential conditions of use- relates the life and death of Supersac-a young fulness and goodness in most of the relations and litterateur about town, and the type of a special callings of life. Such care for one's self is con- class in Paris. Lodging usually in garrets; stantly a check on the idle or unruly self of working hard at times, they live irregularly and others; it is at the same time resistance and ex- die prematurely-well educated, well mannered, ample; it may convert or cure the reckless-at well dressed-to-day in want, to-morrow in luxthe worst it garners the means of helping them ury-elegant, witty, and gay, until the dark in their extremity. There is, moreover, an un-hour comes, of destiny or despair. Such it selfish care for self, which is the wisdom of the seems has been the story of not a few brilliant noblest love and the sublime prudence of heroic men of letters in Paris: a short life-a taxed spirits. It is the saving, the economy, the re- and excited mind-alternations of mirth and served fund of thoughtful and beneficent power. moodiness; soon, failing resources, sickness withThis sort of care for self has been in all great out solace, and frequently, at last, death in the souls, in prophets, apostles, teachers, soldiers, hospital. Supersac was a very decided memeven martyrs. The truly generous and the brave|ber of this class, both in his life and death. shrink from having others as sharers of their troubles; and they deem it to be both ungracious and unjust to tax them even with the pain of sympathy. This is right, most right; for surely it is very unworthy to take advantage of kindly sensibilities, and make them suffer that we may have the mean luxury of expression. The brave and generous man bears his own burden to the utmost, and wills not, if he can, that any one else shall feel its weight.

What money he obtained by his writings or a small Government office that he held, he spent loosely. "But it must be said to his honor," observes the writer, “and to his acuteness of observation, that he never borrowed money of his companions: he knew that nothing so ruined a man here as to borrow money. He bore his privations without an audible groan. He asked no one's sympathy. He appealed to nobody's kindness-all which is the wisdom of living in Paris. Laugh with the laughers, weep with the

We are not, as we have said, tolerant of whining, and ours are not the ethics which give en-weepers, feast with the feasters, dress as well as couragement to unreasonable exaction, or teach the merit of unreasonable submission.

any body, suit your face to the faces around you, and if the fox hid under garments doth gnaw your vitals, let him gnaw them; but take care to let no one suspect he is beneath that raiment cut in the latest fashion, or dream he is preying on your vitals." And so, after a while, Supersac came to the hospital to die. "The disease of which he died," says the writer, "was significant enough: it shows how ravenous was the fox which he hid in his breast: 'twas cancer in the brain."

Still, we would not push our principles into a hard and unfeeling stoicism. This would be as unnatural as it would be unchristian. As it is not in nature to be in ourselves insensible to the pains and griefs of life, it would be most selfish and unchristian to withhold sympathy from them in the case of others. If there may be unjust demand, so, too, there can be uncharitable refusal. There are instances manifold in which the sufferer bears the stinging arrow in the heart, But the most heroic and the most self-endurbut never puts sorrow into words, or tells any ing will sometimes, as by force, let some involunone of the hidden anguish. What a long, fear-tary sighs escape them. Sad and bitter thoughts ful, unsuspected martyrdom was that of Caroline, will come to those who walk on shady side of queen of George the Second! With a fatal can- life, and when fancying they are alone they cer for years eating away her life, she had to will sometimes groan aloud: if those walking

on the sunny side of life should perchance hear ter. We may wish to give sympathy-nay, we the groan, let them not conclude the nature try to give it-and to the degree that we grasp from which it bursts cowardly or weak. Who can tell how long and how desperate has been the struggle before the heart succumbs? If at last it bends, and even weeps, it may be but to obtain strength to renew the battle, and to gain the victory. And if in confidence it puts its troubles into words, the ear of friendship should not listen to them coldly. Take the case from which we started in these meditations. One girl was full of health-had strength and beauty. If her lot was fair, she was, no doubt, more than contented. She was hopeful, more than cheerful. She was joyous. She had society, pleasure, admiration, love. Life was pleasant, and all her feelings were gladsome: nature, if not understood in its suggestiveness or poetry, was yet agreeable in all its impressions on the senses-night brought wholesome rest, day had no lagging length in the weary consciousness of time, and the seasons of the year succeeded like the changing measures of a song. How could she understand the restless pining, the lonely, the undefinable sadness, the visionary longings, the hopeless fancies, of a life the opposite of her own? Why should she? Why indeed should it be expected that she could, or why should it be expected or desired? All that she had her companion wanted. It was no wonder if the living world seemed dull to that companion, and the natural world dark, and existence itself a slow and toilsome journey. We are not in these suppositions taking into account religious influences, which so powerfully modify life; for it is our object in this paper to analyze simply natural experiences. It is within such limits that we view the present and other contrasts. The weaker companion here could obtain no sympathy from the stronger-not be cause the stronger was ungentle or unloving, but because she could not understand the weaker. The weaker spoke an unknown language to her. The stronger had no inward interpretation for the spoken words. The living meaning of such words she had yet to learn, when trial would bring experience, and experience, knowledge. Now, however, she could only answer to her sister's murmur with, "Ain't you too sensitive?" Too sensitive! Perhaps this was the first time she had ever ventured to speak of that within her which was long a hidden pain, and which she had bravely and carefully kept to herself and now thrown back again upon solitude and silence, she will hold her secret closely, and bear it safely to the grave.

a common sentiment with the sufferer we do give it. As far as community of feeling can carry us we go; but when that can not carry us farther, we must stop. So far as we feel we can understand, and so far as we can understand we sympathize; into the peculiar and individual we can not enter: within that there is a mystery to which we can not pierce, and for which our personal consciousness has neither type nor counterpart. If it be a great affliction, our common humanity has always the resource of pity, and we can often help where we can not understand. It is not, however, in great affliction alone that we may fail in the ability to understand others in their troubles, but also in what are considered very minor ones; perhaps, indeed, our difficulty becomes greater as such troubles become less. Our friend complains, for instance, that he has not his just place in society. He either has not the proper station allotted to him, or the station he occupies is not sufficiently respected; or, whatever be his station, he is not, as he thinks, duly recognized. We either have all the station that society can give, or we have all the station that we covet, or we are indifferent about station. In any of these cases we are not in the position to understand our friend. We have all that we can have; we can not therefore tell how we should feel if we had not. Or we have all that we desire, and so we can not imagine what would be our state of mind if we had less. Or we are indifferent to all station; we can not then tell how it would be with us if we were anxious about station. If we can not understand what our own consciousness would be as a hypothesis, how much less can we understand that of our friend as a fact; and to any arguments we urge, he can turn against us all these objections. If we tell him that outward position is mere appearance-inward worth and wisdom alone true reality-he may deny this statement. Outward position is reality-at least, it represents reality. If the individual nobleman is a fool, some one had the talent, the courage, or the cunning which procured for him his title. Even for the fool position is an advantage, and it has even for him a real influence. But, further, outward position is reality as the exponent constantly of talent, character, and successful activity. And, lastly, outward position is reality not only as a social power, but as an incitement, as an intensive force, as an authority, as a means of fixing public attention, and even as a means This one illustration will stand for a large of moral impression. The desire for position variety of other trials and experiences, which it arouses mental energy, improves the common would be useless or tiresome to bring forward mind, and glorifies the great. It becomes a separately and singly. We have given the spirit centralizing influence to faculty and activity, and the principle, and any one can test or verify and gives to endeavor direction, purpose, perthem by examples every day, and in every circle. sistency, and end. It stamps on what a man Our idea-that is, our indifference to troubles does a certain sanction which enlarges the indiwhich we do not feel or can not feel-may be il-vidual to the magnitude of collective numbers, lustrated by experiences in our more outward and confers on his words the grandeur of the life. There is no hard-heartedness in the mat- nation or the sovereignty of the state. Suppose