British general, and after the dinner my genial ancestor would bring forth the sword, and tell how the distinguished Britisher presented it"

"And perhaps pass round the rum," interrupted the whimsical Mrs. Turpord, with a venerable twinkle in her eye.

"Back yonder were the negro huts. I remember well when a child hearing my grandfather tell about our splendid negro, Josh Boston, proud as a king. No; he would not sit in the nigger heaven' on Sundays, and, as they would not admit him to the white pews below, he would stand at the door of the audience room during the entire service. Some people wished to introduce a base viol to help the singing, and one of the deacons took umbrage at it, very properly I

"Mother wishes me to say something about our family traditions; but people with family records are more boastful than early risers, Mr. Thrall's bête noir."

"Miss Turpord, it is seldom," said Thrall, "that I try to joke; say once or twice a year. Unfortunately for me, on this year it came this morning."

divine service would help religion any. left the meeting-house one Sunday, thus creating a great disturbance. Some of the mischiefmakers offered Josh a pound of tobacco if he would sit in the gallery with his own people just one Sunday, and imitate the deacon's example when the viol began. This he promised to do. I am ashamed of Josh; but on the next Lord's Day, as soon as the obnoxious instrument sounded, he

"Ever since the Revolutionary war," said Miss Turpord, "it has been a family custom to take an annual dinner under this tree. Like Mr. Thrall's joke, the day was not always successful, in which case the table was spread in the parlor out of the rain. The day and dinner was observed in memory of the time when General Burgoyne passed through Hadley after his surrender at Saratoga. The general was entertained here at the colonel's home, and all the servants and slaves were given a holiday feast in honor of the guest. He slept in the same room you did last night, gentlemen. We have always called it the general's chamber from that fact; and when he left, he presented his host with a dress sword, tent, and other camp trappings. The sword you probably saw in the general's chamber."

through the audience room to the outside door, greatly to the amusement of the base-viol party. When asked why he did it, he answered, 'Somethin' here wouldn't gib me permission to stay while dat fiddle was agoin'!' and he placed his sable hand on his stomach."

Said Mrs. Turpord, "Josh received his pound of tobacco, you may be sure of that."

All this was absorbing to the antiquarian Thrall, and he maintained an enthusiastic silence; but when he saw her story, which had evidently been so many times rehearsed, was done, he asked quite irreverently (your silent man when he does speak waives preliminary adjectives and unnecessary introductions), after an individual who was indefinitely known to the visitor as "Ned." As this name was pronounced, a subdued African chuckle was heard from the suburbs of the elm shade, and

"After the Revolution, Colonel Turpord was made a general, and yearly, as the season came round, he would call the family together, invite in the friends, put up the tent given him by the

face with her apron, and thus concealing her rapturous distortions.

"I never knew aunty to act like that. She has had better training," said the daughter, in an undertone.

"Perhaps it is not wholly her fault," said smoking-cap, in confusion; "we have been vainly questioning her this morning concerning Ned"More chuckles.

our modern writers say there isn't a word of truth in the Indian-attack-and-angel-of-God story." "Oh, hush up on your history!"

"Thought you told Miss Turpord," said Thrall,

Martha retired, and Mr. Blood, like any other person who sports a mental observatory, could not fail to perceive that Thrall's question out of a clear sky had produced an unfavorable impression upon the fair hostess, and in order to gain by his friend's downfall, he observed, quite philosophically for him, "The study of the past is far more interesting to me than any riddles concerning nomenclature."

Miss Turpord nodded approvingly, and Blood tingled in every fibre. At a later period of his career, he, in describing his feelings, likened it to the "tintinnabulation of the bells." The subject of Ned was dropped, and as the sun, with slanted rays, had stooped low enough to impertinently gaze into the faces of the tea-party, they concluded to withdraw. The gallant Mr. Blood offered his arm to the aged lady in accordance with the true philosophy of courting.

More tintinnabulation.

On the second floor of this rural mansion, at the end of the hall by the window, our gentlemen friends gathered while the sunset colors were paling.

"It was in front of this house," said Thrall, "that Dr. Hopkins, pastor of the Hadley Church, addressed some Shays's men under the command of Day, of West Springfield, you remember, just after the Revolution. Down to the left, in the middle of the broad street where the Northampton road crosses, is where the Russell Church stood, the parsonage being on this cornerthe house that concealed Goffe and Whalley, the regicides, who fled after Cromwell's death. Whalley was probably buried back of the cellar wall. Major Simpson, when a boy, saw the bones taken out. An attack of the Indians was made on the town when they were at church one Sunday morning, and Goffe, a white-haired man, rushed from the parsonage and warned them. After the danger he mysteriously disappeared, and most of the people thought he was an angel of God. Walter Scott has brought this into Peveril of the Peak,' and Southey once planned a grand modern Iliad with Goffe, the regicide, as the hero. Some of

"Thunder! I'd have told her I could chew glass if she'd thought any the more of me."

For a long time they remained silently gazing at the Berkshire hills over the Connecticut River. The sunset colors in the valley were deepened and enriched by the numerous factories with their dirty smoke and coal dust. The long, flat hills were clothed in purple and canopied in gold. Little clouds played at castle-building in the rich, warm air, and blushed red at their pranks before the sun; while below was a brilliant bit of river jew eled among the colors.

"What if Jove should frame this picture and hang it up in Olympus!" exclaimed the enraptured antiquarian.

"If he did, and sister Jane borrowed it and presented it to the New York Academy of Design, wouldn't it be rejected as not being true to Nature?"

Blood knew something about art, did he?

As they stood in further silence under the glories of a Connecticut River sunset, the dun-colored curtain of soft twilight rolled down over all, and it was night.

But with Mr. Blood it was more morning than night. A sun had risen over the chaldron of his affections. He bubbled, he seethed, he sudsed with delight. He wandered into the dark street; he felt ascetic.

The moon, that old, round-faced mistress, whose habit of conjuring with lovers' loves was fixed upon her long before Time was sliced up into Christian centuries, lifted her large head over the Pelham hills, and looked about for a coiffure of clouds for her night walk. Ofttimes the ancient dame is very fastidious, and, having tried on all the silk and satin in the firmament millinery-shop, rejects all, wanders on bareheaded, and turns a witching eye on lovers' lanes.

There are times when a sudden change in natural phenomena, like a sunset, or the breaking of a thunder cloud and the after silence, produces the impressive conviction of a veritable personal supervision in the natural world, a mighty stage manager in the Globe theatre of Nature-something above first causes and such like intangible

abstractions; the stock in trade of people who live on cold bits of philosophy and know that there are no streets in the city of the New Jerusalem. Mr. Blood, a thoroughly worldly-minded man, cold and surface-cultured, who hadn't energy enough to crack a cocoanut for its milk, slightly flippant on topics beyond the depth of his nose, and positively rude in the presence of ministers of the gospel, was wonderfully impressed with the sen-e of an awful presence about him somewhere. Moons he had been familiar with. He had seen the high, white January moon stuck in a dirty, cold cloud bank like a spoiled cheese. He had seen the lover's moon in June and the fat harvest moon in the fall-not to speak of the great annual séance of a ghostly face looking from a smokesoftened sky in Indian-summer evenings. But he had never before bothered his head about moons, only to keep him or his horse in the road. However, a particular moon was over him, and its individual beams were producing tintinnabulation. Well, lips puffed out, thumbs settled into the arm-hole of his vest, patent leather heels sank into the gravel sidewalk-he was philosophic; beg pardon, Mr. Blood

was in love.

Not being a man who could exist long on the diet of his own thoughts and inspirations, he was only philosophic for a moment or two. Then he would relapse to

beds, and there was a smell of pine trees. Noisy June bugs traversed the valley like miniature steam engines, and hungry pickerel splashed in the moonlight. Under the deep bank there came a solemn utterance; it was not of agony or exulta

HOME OF THE VENERABLE BULLFROG.

At an unknown hour he found himself upon a high bank of the river. He could not exactly tell where it was, or how he had got there. The night was serene and quiet; and, since he was in for unusual and loony things, he concluded to sit down and meditate, on nights serene and pleasant. Lazy breezes lounged about the hills or were cradled in rocking cornfields and clover

bullfrog, and the echo was deep, awful and lonely. These venerable bullfrogs in rivers! Not the everyday green jumping-jack that twirls out its nonsense in all weathers, but the patriarch bullfrog which can speak of a summer night to another patriarch bullfrog a mile away, and receive an answer! They croak as though some mischief was brewing. When Blood heard this frog of frogs, he thought of a brigand bathing his bloody

limbs, or of a misanthrope who was awake while the world slept. The great chorus of crickets gradually hushed, the long river drew over a portion of its form a blanket of frog, and a dog barked in the distance. When that great timepiece which has never run down from the beginning the cock-crowed the hour of midnight, Mr. Blood was musing. He was in a summer night's dream of perfumes and river-ripples, moonlight and the breezes, and as he reclined in the tall grass he was nearly as unconscious as the Connecticut, which lay before him like an athlete with half of his bed-clothes kicked off.

How long Blood would have remained under this mesmerism of moonlight is uncertain, if he had not discovered the form of a man standing about ten rods from him and looking into the water. He was taller and stouter than Thrall, and, as Blood did not care to meet a stranger in such a strange place, he rose and retreated to a tree some distance from the bank, and buried himself in the shade. The stranger acted very curiously. He would look in every direction at the grim glories of the night, take a step or two, and then in the most inexplicable manner extend his arms.

"A frog, by Jove!" said Blood to himself, as he watched these performances, and thought of the unearthly croakings which had occasionally startled him during the night. The strange form, frog, man, or devil, approached nearer, and was heard to mutter.

Turpord's suitor. Long, severe noses and firm chins were burned on the poor fellow's love-lor retina. Trees stood up on the hilltops like long, severe noses, and the man o' the moon had a firm chin, while the little night clouds were nothing` more or less than heaps of noses, long and severe, and chins firm. He hastened home, guiltily adjusted the latch-key, and sought the historic bed.

Mr. Blood did not know how it was; but when he awoke the sun was about through singing Excelsior, and there was no one about to tell him where the family had gone. To be sure, Aunt Martha was ready with his warm breakfast; but Martha was mum. She had been reproved once for laughing out of season, and had learned her lesson. Blood broke brown bread over his coffee in listless annoyance. The tintinnabulation had subsided to a certain extent. He could eat but little, and that, too, at a table furnished with abundant country contributions of cream, rich butter, strawberries, and healthy buttermilk.

A good deal of Mr. Blood's love-agony, as is often the case, was purely subjective; it was all on one side. Many a man has languished over a girl with freckles as big as pancakes, and as innocent of his tender ambition as Miss Turpord was of Blood's. It is a mystery, this torrent which a girl's eye will let loose in a man. Her teeth may be as shinglenails, and her eyes a rank misalliance; but she has hit the secret spring, and down come philosophy, plans, purposes, business and all; and what a washout! Blood felt as new after his

"Whew!" exclaimed Blood, rising to his feet, "I'll know about this Ned, if I die for it. Here, sir," he said, raising his voice, "have you any objections to talking to me?"

The mysterious form instantaneously disappeared down the bank, and was not seen again.

"Gad! this is curious;" and while he marveled at the apparition, the great bullfrog in the dark croaked its sepulchral croak, and the listener trembled.

It could not have been a veritable frog; for as it turned about when spoken to, Blood caught a faint glimpse of a most remarkable face. The moon is not particular about going into particulars; but Blood did not fail to distinguish a long, severe nose, and a firm chin. Blood was jealous. That nose belonged to Ned, and Ned was Aggie

had subsided. But the "master-mistress of his passion" was entirely unaware of so much inun dation, and was sublimely innocent of any designs on Mr. Blood's floodgates.

A New England barn in June, stuffed with sweetly-smelling hay just in from the meadowshay in the vast mow, hay on the scaffold, dripping with fragrant wisps of timothy, hay on the barn floor spread out for the last airing before being moved away for the winter, hay everywhere -of all the perfumery boxes in the world, what can match a barn of new hay in June?

Ned, a somewhat mysterious and unknown quantity in the eyes of the antiquarian and his companion, was a stout, brown-skinned, black-haired, stolidly-knit servant of three years standing in the Turpord employ. He stood in shirtsleeves in the barn with a mammoth fork full of hay draping him