And here--borne on the wings of a last expiring whistle -his soul took its flight.

Not a word had been spoken by either of the combatants!

A MARRIED MAN'S REVERY.

JOHN INMAN.

[The author of the following sketch, a brother of Henry Inman, the noted portrait-painter, was born at Utica, New York, in 1805, and was an associate editor of the New York Mirror and The Commercial Advertiser. He died in 1850.]

WHAT a block head my brother Tom is, not to marry! or rather, perhaps I should say, what a blockhead not to marry some twenty-five years ago!-for I suppose he'd hardly get any decent sort of a body to take him, as old as he is now. Poor fellow! what a forlorn, desolate kind of a life he leads! no wife to take care of him,—no children to love him, no domestic enjoyment,-nothing snug and comfortable in his arrangements at home,-nice sociable dinners, pleasant faces at breakfast. By the way, what the deuce is the reason my breakfast does not come up? I've been waiting for it this half-hour. Oh, I forgot; my wife sent the cook to market to get some trash or other for Dick's cold. She coddles that boy to death. But, after all, I ought not to find fault with Tom for not getting a wife, for he has lent me a good deal of money that came quite convenient, and I suppose my young ones will have all he's worth when he dies, poor fellow! They'll want it, I'm afraid; for, although my business does very well, this housekeeping eats up the profits, with such a large family as mine. Let us see: how many mouths have I to feed

every day? There's my wife and her two sisters,-that's three; and the four boys,-seven; and Lucy, and Sarah, and Jane, and Louisa, four more,-eleven; then there's the cook and the housemaid and the boy,-fourteen; and the woman that comes every day to wash and do odd jobs about the house,-fifteen; then there's the nursery maid, -sixteen; surely there must be another; I'm sure I made out seventeen when I was reckoning up last Sunday morning at church; there must be another somewhere. Let me see again; wife, wife's sisters, boys, girls-oh! it's myself. Faith, I have so many to think of and provide for that I forget myself half the time. Yes, that makes it, seventeen. Seventeen people to feed every day is no joke; and, somehow or other, they all have most furious. appetites; but then, bless their hearts, it's pleasant to see them eat. What a havoc they do make with the buckwheat-cakes of a morning, to be sure! Now, poor Tom knows nothing of all this. There he lives all alone by himself in a boarding-house, with nobody near him that cares a brass farthing whether he lives or dies. No affectionate wife to nurse him and coddle him up when he's sick; no little prattlers about him to keep him in a good humor; no dawning intellects, whose development he can amuse himself with watching day after day; nobody to study his wishes and keep all his comforts ready. Confound it, hasn't that woman got back from the market yet? I feel remarkably hungry. I don't mind the boy's being coddled and messed if my wife likes it, but there's no joke in having the breakfast kept back for an hour. Oh, by the way, I must remember to buy all those things for the children to-day. Christmas is close at hand, and my wife has made out a list of the presents she means to put in their stockings. More expense; and their school-bills coming in, too. I remember

before I was married I used to think what a delight it would be to educate the young rogues myself; but a man with a large family has no time for that sort of amusement. I wonder how old my young Tom is! let me see,— when does his birthday come? next month, as I'm a Christian; and then he will be fourteen. Boys of fourteen. consider themselves all but men, nowadays, and Tom is quite of that mind, I see. Nothing will suit his exquisite feet but Wellington boots, at thirty shillings a pair; and his mother has been throwing out hints for some time as to the propriety of getting a watch for him,-gold, of course. Silver was quite good enough for me when I was a half a score years older than he is; but times are awfully changed since my younger days. Then, I believe in my soul, the young villain has learned to play billiards; and three or four times lately when he has come in late at night his clothes seemed to be strongly perfumed with cigar-smoke. Heigho! Fathers have many troubles, and I can't help thinking sometimes that old bachelors are not such wonderful fools, after all. They go to their pillows at night with no cares on their mind to keep them awake; and, when they have once got to sleep, nothing comes to disturb their repose; nothing short of the house being on fire can reach their peaceful condition. No getting up in the cold to walk up and down the room for an hour or two with a squalling young varlet, as my luck has been for the last five or six weeks. It's an astonishing thing to perceive what a passion our little Louisa exhibits for crying; so sure as the clock strikes three she begins, and there's no getting her quiet again until she has fairly exhausted the strength of her lungs with good, straightforward screaming. I can't for the life of me understand why the young villains don't get through all their squalling and roaring in the daytime, when I am out of the way. Then,

again, what a delightful pleasure it is to be routed out of one's first nap and sent off post-haste for the doctor, as I was on Monday night, when my wife thought Sarah had got the croup, and frightened me half out of my wits with her lamentations and fidgets. By the way, there's the doctor's bill to be paid soon: his collector always pays me a visit just before Christmas. Brother Tom has no doctors to fee, and that certainly is a great comfort. Bless my soul, how the time slips away! Past nine o'clock and no breakfast ready yet,-wife messing with Dick and getting the three girls and their two brothers ready for school. Nobody thinks of me, starving here all this time. What the plague has become of my newspaper, I wonder? That young rascal Tom has carried it off, I dare say, to read in school when he ought to be poring over his books. He's a great torment, that boy. But no matter; there's a great deal of pleasure in married life, and, if some vexations and troubles do come with its delights, grumbling won't take them away. Nevertheless, brother Tom, I'm not very certain but that you have done quite as wisely as I, after all.

[To piece out the short selection above given we add two others, the first being an extract from John Neal's well-known and popular essay on "Children."]

CHILDREN.

You have but to go abroad for half an hour in pleasant weather, or to throw open your doors or windows on a Saturday afternoon, if you live anywhere in the neighborhood of a school-house, or a vacant lot with here and there a patch of green or a dry place in it, and steal behind the curtains, or draw the blinds and let the fresh wind blow through and through the chambers of your heart for a few

minutes, winnowing the dust and scattering the cobwebs that have gathered there while you were asleep, and, lo! you will find it ringing with the voices of children at play, and all alive with the glimmering phantasmagoria of leap-frog, prison-base, or knock-up-and-catch.

Let us try the experiment. There! I have opened the windows, I have drawn the blinds, and, hark! already there is the sound of little voices afar off, like "sweet bells jangling." Nearer and nearer come they, and now we catch a glimpse of bright faces peering round the corners, and there, by that empty enclosure, a general mustering and swarming, as of bees about a newly-discovered flowergarden. But the voices we now hear proceed from two little fellows who have withdrawn from the rest. One carries a large basket, and his eyes are directed to my window he doesn't half like the blinds being drawn. The other follows him with a tattered book under his arm, rapping the posts, one after the other, as he goes along. He is clearly on bad terms with himself. And now we can see their faces. Both are grave, and one rather pale; and trying to look ferocious. And, hark! now we are able to distinguish their words. "Well, I ain't skeered o' you," says the foremost and the larger boy. "Nor I ain't skeered o' you," retorts the other; "but you needn't say you meant to lick me." And so I thought. Another, less acquainted with children, might not be able to see the connection; but I could: it was worthy of Aristotle himself or John Locke. "I didn't say I meant to lick ye," rejoined the first; "I said I could lick ye, and so I can." To which the other replies, glancing first at my window and then all up and down street, "I should like to see you try it." Whereupon the larger boy begins to move away, half backwards, half sideways, muttering, just loud enough to be heard, "Ah, you want to fight now, jest 'cause you're