the pages of her treasured book, cold, and hunger, and loneliness are forgotten; she even smiles faintly now and then, but at the picture of the sailor lad, who was "doom'd upon the main to toil," the tears run fast upon her furrowed cheek; she bows her weary head upon the page, and moves no more-and I think the old maid is alone no longer-for she is dead.

And so they sold the poor woman's scraps of furniture, and amongst them the old album, and to the thoughtless cruel world only an old maid had passed away; and so nobody cried because she was gone, no mourner followed her body to the grave. Yet the angels who carried the spirit up from the earth rejoiced, for they knew that Hermia and Helena were united, and happy for ever and evermore.

How dazzling the light seems now; I think I must have been dreaming, for around me are the sunflowers and the peacock's feathersI am at home again. I don't think I'll read that silly old album any more, it gives one such sad ideas. But strange to say, the album has vanished and never could be found again; it was a most mysterious disappearance certainly; but perhaps there never was an old album with silly pictures and verses in it, nor two old maids, named Hermia and Helena. Who can say? Meanwhile let us amuse ourselves, for it is the merry and jolly Christmas time, when everybody is, or should be, laughing all day long, and forgetting all unpleasant things as though they were not.

W. H. T.

RESIGNATION.

Once, long ago, I loved a maid
For none my heart beat warmer;
And yet she called me fickle, false,
And left me; cruel charmer!

Since then, to 'scape the like mishap
And after due reflection

I love all pretty girls I see
With the self-same affection.

J. K.

MY FIRST SCHOOLMASTER.

I HAD arrived at the mature age of nine when I was let loose from my mother's apron-strings and transferred to the guardianship and tender mercies of Mr. Robert Snoocher, Organist and Schoolmaster, of Blankupon-Stour.

It must not be supposed, however, that my education had been entirely neglected until I became a pupil of this illustrious pedagogue at his "Select Academy for Young Gentlemen." So far from this being the case I had been "very much schooled," indeed previously by sundry feminine representatives of the scholastic profession; for although fifty years have passed away since my education began, my memory is still so retentive as to various little incidents which befell me during my infancy, such as swallowing pins and buttons inadvertently, eating slate pencil, and drinking ink; that I can, without much difficulty, fix the period when I was first taken to school, or "carried over the crossings " by my nurse, as somewhere between my third and fourth birthdays.

Fifty years form a long retrospect; and it is only when attempting to chronicle some of the incidents of childhood and youth, as I have undertaken to do in this brief biography, that one can realise to the fullest extent the changes which have taken place during the last half-century; not merely throughout the world at large, but in one's own immediate neighbourhood. Then-cock-fighting, bull-baiting, and prize-fighting, to which might be added witnessing the wholesale public execution of criminals, were the popular amusements. Then-there were no postage stamps, no envelopes, no penny daily newspapers, no lucifer matches. Photography and lighting by gas were in their infancy; and the possibilities of the present full development of the Railway system were even more deeply hidden in the womb of time than is the science of electriclighting in the present day.

No

Locally there was no mayor, no corporation; no council-house. ward meetings; no municipal fights! Think of this, ye unpleasantly jubilant liberals and ye sat-upon conservatives. Was life worth

living? Or do ye look back with regret to the good (?) old times described by our own poet Freeth some fifty years before, when he says:

Ye wrangling old cits, let me beg you'd look down,
And copy from Birmingham's peaceable town,
Where souls forty thousand or more you may view!
No justice of peace, and but constables two.

Let cities and boroughs for contest prepare,
In chusing of Sheriffs, Recorder, or Mayor;
With such kind of titles they've nothing to do,
Nor discord in chusing of officers shew.

The envy and hatred elections bring on,

Their hearty intention is always to shun;

No polling, no scratching, nor scrutinies rise,

Who friendship esteem must such measures dispise.

Then there were no public parks or baths, save Pudding Brook, and the ever memorable Vaughton's Hole. No Midland Institute, no Board Schools, and, alas! but few Statues, and no Memorial Fountains whatever.

At the time when my boarding-school experience began the stage coach was a flourishing institution; and there are few sights more pleasantly impressed upon my memory than the turn-out of a smart fourin-hand from the Nelson Hotel on a bright May morning on its twelve hours journey to London; and few sounds that I know of more exhilarating than the Hi-ho-tantivy of the guard's bugle.

The coaches to London via Banbury and Oxford passed the very door of Mr. Snoocher's "Academy" every day, but he never availed himself of their services to convey his pupils to school. Having an eye to effect and economy, especially economy, he always engaged a chaise-and-pair for the occasion, subsequently charging the parents about double the ordinary coach fare. I recollect, as if it were but a few years ago, how jolly I thought it was to go to school, like Mrs. Gilpin went unto the Bell at Edmonton, all in a "chaise-and-pair;" that is to say, I thought so when we started; but as the said chaise though originally constructed to hold four persons was made to accommodate eight boys, we were compelled to stand during the whole of the journey. By the time we stopped to bait at Stratford-on-Avon it was quite dark and very cold, although only about the middle of July. Some of the big boys of sixteen or seventeen, who seemed then in my eyes to be grown-up men, availed themselves of this opportunity to descend from the chaise and spend a portion of their pocket-money in cigars, and in an evil moment I was tempted to follow their example. When I say that this was my first cigar, all previous experiments in smoking having been confined to small pieces of cane, the reader will readily imagine the dénouement. We were so closely packed standing up, and the night was so dark, that the changing hues of my complexion, and the various stages of my indisposition were

unnoticed except by my immediate neighbours who promised, in schoolboy parlance, "not to split." The evidences of my indiscretion were however, very visible on the following morning.

I am obliged to confess that for the first few days after my arrival I was terribly cast down with "home-sickness," and I know I gave way to frequent bouts of crying. One of the big boys who, for some reason or other, had taken a fancy to me, and who was my friend on many occasions afterwards when the fighting epidemic raged in the play-ground, found me wandering about with tears streaming down my cheeks. In order to comfort me, and as a striking proof of his friendship, he plied me with marbles, buttons, and bits of slate pencil, which articles I subsequently discovered often did duty for small change when pocket-money ran short. But as a climax to his generosity, and the more effectually to divert my attention, he lent me a Birmingham Budget, a low publication then very popular amongst a certain class of people, which wonderful production contained a very extensive and vivid account of a prize-fight which had recently come off between the Tipton Slasher, I believe, and another equally celebrated member of the P. R. I mention this circumstance as indicative of "ye manners of ye age." Truth compels me to say that my good-hearted protector and friend subsequently ran away from school (a feat which caused him to be long remembered by his schoolfellows as the greatest of heroes); that he took to evil courses, and came to grief soon after arriving at man's estate.

Now to describe my schoolmaster. My acquaintance with Mr. Snoocher began about two years before Dickens portrayed Mr. Squeers, of Dotheboys Hall, and I have often regretted that the great novelist had never, to use an expressive phrase, come across" this wonderful specimen of the schoolmaster of the period.

As a child, my impression of his personal appearance was that he was of gigantic stature and powerful frame, but I discovered in after years when I had left his school, that he was only of middle size and not over muscular; a discovery which filled me with such deep vexation that I felt a longing desire to go back to his school so that I might have the opportunity to return with interest some of the blows and indignities which he had bestowed upon me in common with the rest of my schoolfellows. As he was a tyrant to his pupils, it is scarcely necessary to say that he was cringing and oily to all from whom favours might be obtained. In fancy I can see him now in his trying-to-get-a-pupil attitude standing before the mother and father of the doomed one; his body bent deferentially forward, his red fists engaged in the process so well known as "washing hands with invisible soap," and a hypocritical out-of-school smile beaming across his sallow face. But his eyes! How can I describe them? There are people who are afflicted witith an obliquity of vision which is generally and politely described as "a slight cast in the eye," the effect of which is, I believe, rather pleasing than otherwise; but there are others in whom the defect is so pronounced that no other word but squint can do it adequate justice. Such was the

case with Mr. Robert Snoocher. This affliction was a daily cause of pain and suffering to his pupils, by whom he was always designated (out of school) as "Squinting Bobby."

His favourite weapon of punishment for trifling offences in school was an eighteen-inch ruler, and by constant practice he had acquired considerable dexterity in the use of it. He would poise it quite scientifically at the one end, between his finger and thumb, loose it while on the swing, and he was never known to miss the head of the wretched object of his wrath. Unfortunately, owing to the fearful obliquity of vision referred to, it was impossible to tell for whom the uplifted ruler was intended, so that when, may be, Saunders, jun. was inwardly chuckling at the thought that it would presently come in contact with the head of his enemy, Rogers, sen., the missive would arrrive with unerring precision and force on the cranium of poor Saunders himself.

It was my fate and misfortune to be one of that unenviable race known as "precocious boys." My precocity was intensified, so to speak, by a combination of circumstances over which I had no control. I was an only son. My mother who had a mania for music, and who possessed a really charming voice, encouraged me to sing and to play the piano at a very early age; and the good soul believed in her heart I am sure, that I should some day eclipse Braham as a vocalist, and Handel as a composer. My father's hobby was poetry and recitation; and under the stimulus of his example, and through his good teaching I learned to declaim the poetry of Mrs. Hemans, Thomas Campbell, and others, even before I could do a sum in addition.

I have not the slightest fear that by such a description of myself I shall be accused of vanity. If I could have known at that time what tradition and my own experience have since taught me, that precocity is a disease, and that the majority of precocious children eventually become the dullards of society, I should have bewailed my superficial brilliancy, and dreaded the approach of manhood. But precocious as I was, I had not the foresight to see what my ultimate fate would be, nor sufficient sense to notice that my schoolmaster was making use of me as a decoy under the guise of favouritism. That unwise and unfair system of education (?) which is not yet a thing entirely of the past, by which the dull boys are left in their dullness to plod through their lessons as best they can, while those who are endowed by nature with greater aptitude for learning and can best help themselves, are petted, crammed, and pushed on by the teachers for their own aggrandisement, was, of course, the system adopted by Mr. Snoocher. I was compelled or allowed to practise my music on the best piano for half an hour every evening, and on a piano which wasn't the best an hour before breakfast, and I was permitted to read poetry with my master's daughter in the family parlour three evenings a week, a privilege which caused me many a fight in the play-ground.

It must not be supposed, however, that my cunning dominie would allow himself or the inmates of the "select academy" generally to be disturbed in the early morning by my persistent rattling up and down the scales,