him to your care again," said indignant mamma, as one who withdrew a blessed privilege.

"Don't say that, mother; it would be a punishment too severe," said the mischievous little pale sister, in tones of pity, and her face brimming with mirth.

Everybody laughed, and peace was re

stored.

On the third evening, misery came to me in an envelope post-marked New York: :

"MY DEAR PLOVINS:-
:-

"I shall be with you the night after you receive this. Engage a room for me. Have you seen anything of a Miss Tarlingford, where you are staying? You should know her. She is very brilliant and accomplished, but is retiring. I am willing to tell you, but it must go no farther, that we are betrothed.

"Yours, in a hurry,

"FRANK LILLIVAN."

My heart was as the mercury of a thermometer which is plunged into ice; but I preserved an outward composure. Turning over the pile of letters awaiting owners, I came upon one, directed in Lillivan's handwriting, to Miss A. Tarlingford, etc., etc.

To think that a paltry superscription should carry such a weight of tribulation with it!

I thus discovered that my lines had fallen in unpleasant places. I was fishing in a preoccupied stream, and had got myself entangled.

I avoided the public table, and shrunk from society. During the whole of the next morning, I kept aloof from the temptations of Tarlingford, and took to billiards.

In the afternoon, as I sat gloomily in my room, with feet protruding from the window, and body inclined rearward, (the American attitude of despair,) the piano tinkled. It was the same melody which had attracted me a few happy days before. Strengthening myself with a pow

erful resolution to extricate myself from the bewitching influence which had surrounded me, I arose, and went straightway to the parlor. Could it be that a flash of pleasure beamed on Miss Tarlingford's face? or was I a deluded gosling? The latter suggestion seemed the more credible, so I cheerfully adopted it. "We have missed you, Mr. Plovins,' said the fair enslaver; "I hope you have not been unwell?"

"Unwell?-oh, no, no!"

-us, to

"You have not been near meday," (reprovingly,) "not even at dinner; and the trout were superb.”

A sudden hope mounted within me. "Miss Tarlingford, pray, excuse me,— your first name, may I ask what it is?" "Arabella is my name, and" (whisperingly) "you may use it, if you like.”

"Oh, hideous horror! And this is what they call flirtation," I thought. And the hope which had risen blazing, like a rocket, went down fuliginous, like the stick.

"Mr. Plovins, I will say you are very —very inconstant, to be absent all day, thus."

"Miss Tarlingford, it is not inconstancy, it is billiards."

"It cannot be, Miss Tarlingford." (Low tragedy tones.)

"Why not?"

"Because your name is Arabella." "Very well, Sir,- if you do not like my name, you need not repeat it."

"I adore it; it is not that. Forgive

me."

"Then I will get my hat";- and her light footsteps tapped upon the stairs.

Here was a state of things! Where were my firmness and my resolution now? Where was the Pythian probity for which, according to my expectations, Lillivan was to have poured Damoniac gratitude upon me? Was I, or was I not, rapidly degenerating into villany? I felt that I was, and blushed for my family.

If her name had been anything but Arabella, anything the initial of which was not A, then I could have justified myself; but now, and I was about to teach her billiards! To what depth of depravity had I come at last!

She rejoined me, beaming with anticipation and radiant with the exercise of running down-stairs. Together we entered the billiard-room.

Now this I declare: the ball-room, with its flashing lights, intoxicating perfumes, starry hosts of gleaming eyes, refulgent robes, mirrors duplicating countless splendors and ceaseless whirl of vanity, may add a tenfold lustre to the charm of beauty, and I know it does; the operabox embellishments of blazing gas, and glittering gems and flowers, fresh from native beds of millinery, all-odorous with divinest scents of Lubin, harmoniously dulcified, have their value, which is great and glorious, no doubt, and regally doth woman expand and glow among them; in numberless ways, and aided by numberless accessories, do feminine graces nimbly and sweetly recommend themselves unto our pleasant senses; but this I will for ever and ever say,- that nowhere, neither in gorgeous hall, nor gilded opera-box, nor in any other place, nor under any other circumstances, may such bewildering and insidious power of maidenly enchantment be exercised as at the

billiard-table; especially when the enchantress is utterly ignorant of the duties required of her, and confidingly seeks manly encouragement and guidance. Controlled by the hand of beauty, the cue becomes a magic wand, and the balls are no longer bits of inanimate ivory, but, poked restlessly hither and thither, circulating messengers of fasci

nation.

I know, for I have been there.

Had Miss Tarlingford turned her thoughts toward the bowling-alley, I might without difficulty have retained my self-possession; for her sex are not charming at ten-pins. They stride rampant, and hurl danger around them, aiming anywhere at random; or they make small skips and screams, and perform ridiculous flings in the air, injurious to the alleys and to their game; or they drop balls with unaffected languor, and develop at an early stage of proceedings a tendency to gutters, above which they never rise throughout; and all this is annoying, and fit only for Bloomers, who can be degraded by nothing on earth.

But billiards! what statuesque postures, what freedom of gesture, what swaying grace and vivacious energy this game involves! And then the attendant distractions, the pinching together of the hand, to form the needed notch, the perfect art of which, like fist-clenching, is unattainable by woman, who substitutes some queerness all her own,-the fierce grasping and propulsion of the cue,the loving reclension upon the table when the long shots come in, the dainty foot uprising, to preserve the owner's balance, but, as it gleams suspended, destroying the observer's,- all combine, as they did this time, to scatter stern promptings of duty beyond recalling.

First, Arabella's little hand must be moulded into a bridge, and, being slow to cramp itself correctly, though pliant as a politician's conscience, the operation of folding it together had to be many times repeated. Next, shots must be made for her, she retaining her hold of the cue, to get into the way of it. Then all went on

THE aurora borealis, or rather, the polar aurora, for there are auroræ australes as well as aurora boreales, - has been an object of wonder and admiration from time immemorial.

Pliny and Aristotle record phenomena identical with those which later times have witnessed. The ancients ranked this with other celestial phenomena, as portending great events.

In a Bible imprinted at London in the year 1599, the 22d verse of the 37th chapter of Job reads thus: "The brightness commeth out of the Northe, the praise to God which is terrible." The writer of the Book of Job was very conversant with natural objects, and may have referred to the aurora borealis and

the phenomena immediately connected therewith.

In 1560, we are told, it was seen at London in the shape of burning spears, a similitude which would be no less appropriate now than then. Frequent displays are recorded during the fifteen years following that date. During the latter half of the seventeenth century, the phenomena were frequently visible, oftentimes being characterized by remarkable brilliancy. After 1745, the displays suddenly diminished, and were but rarely seen for the next nine years. The present century has been favored to a remarkable degree. The displays during the years 1835, '36, '37, '46, '48, '51, 52, and '59, have been especially grand.