fingers, and make profound inquiries, which nobody thinks best to hear! You look on with a languid smile, and they pass out, asking 'why they can't stay with dear mamma, and why they mustn't play puss in the corner,' as usual?

"You wonder if your little croupy boy tied his tippet on when he went to school, and whether Betty will see that your husband's flannel is aired, and if Peggy has cleaned the silver and washed off the front door-steps, and what your blessed husband is about, that he don't come home to dinner. There sits old nurse, keeping up that dreadful treadmill trotting, 'to quiet the baby,' till you could fly through the key-hole in desperation.

The odor of dinner begins to creep up stairs— you wonder if your husband's pudding will be made right, and if Betty will remember to put wine in the sauce, as he likes it; and then the perspiration starts out on your forehead, as you hear a thumping on the stairs, and a child's suppressed scream; and nurse swathes the baby up in flannel to the tip of its nose, dumps it down in the easychair, and tells you to 'leave the family to her, and go to sleep.' Bye-and-bye she comes in, after staying down long enough to get a refreshing cup of coffee-and walks up to the bed with a bowl of gruel, tasting it, and then putting the spoon back

into the bowl. In the first place you In the first place you hate gruel-in the next, you couldn't eat it if she held a pistol to your head, after THAT SPOON has been in her mouth; so you meekly suggest that it be set on the table to cool, (hoping by some providential interposition, it may get tipped over.) Well, she creeps round your room with a pair of creaking shoes, and a bran new gingham gown, that rattles like a paper window-curtain, at every step; and smooths her hair with your nice little head-brush, and opens a drawer by mistake (?) 'thinking it was the baby's drawer.' Then you hear little nails scratching on the door; and Charley whispers through the keyhole- Mamma, Charley's tired; please let Charley come in?' Nurse scowls, and says no; but you intercede (poor Charley, he's only a baby himself.) Well, he leans his little head wearily against the pillow, and looks suspiciously at that little bundle of flannel in nurse's lap. It's clear he's had a hard time of it, what with tears and molasses! The little shining curls that you have so often rolled over your fingers, are a tangled mass; and you long to take him, and make him comfortable, and cosset him a little; and then the baby cries again, and you turn your head to the pillow with a smothered sigh. Nurse hears it, and Charley is taken struggling from the room.

"You take your watch from under the pillow, to see if husband won't be home soon, and then look at nurse, who takes a pinch of snuff over your bowl of gruel, and sits down nodding drowsily, with the baby in alarming proximity to the fire. Now you hear a dear step on the stairs. It's your Charley! How bright he looks! and what nice fresh air he brings with him from out doors! He parts the bed-curtains, looks in, and pats you on the cheek. You just want to lay your head on his shoulder, and have such a splendid cry! but there sits that old Gorgon of a nurse-she don't believe in husbands, she don't! You make Charley a free mason sign to send her down stairs for something. He says, (right out loud-men are so stupid!) 'What did you say, dear?' Of course you protest you didn't say a word-never thought of such a thing! and cuddle your head down to your ruffled pillows, and cry because you don't know what else to do, and because you are weak and weary, and full of care for your family, and don't want to see anybody but 'Charley.'

"Nurse says 'she shall have you sick,' and tells your husband 'he'd better go down, and let you go to sleep.' Off he goes, wondering what on earth ails you, to cry!-wishing he had nothing to do but lie still, and be waited upon! After dinner

he comes in to bid you good-bye before he goes to his office-whistles 'Nelly Bly' loud enough to wake up the baby, (whom he calls 'a comical little concern!') and puts his dear thoughtless head down to your pillow, (at a signal from you,) to hear what you have to say. Well, there's no help for it, you cry again, and only say 'dear Charley,' and he laughs, and settles his dickey, and says you are 'a nervous little puss,' gives you a kiss, lights his cigar at the fire, half strangles the new baby with the first whiff, and takes your heart off with him down street!

"And you lie there and eat that gruel! and pick the fuzz all off the blanket, and make faces at the nurse, under the sheet, and wish Eve had never ate that apple (Genesis 3: 16;) or that you were Abel' to Cain' her for doing it!"

MRS. ZEBEDEE SMITH'S

PHILOSOPHY.

EAR me! how expensive it is to be poor. Every

DEAR

time I go out, my best bib and tucker has to go on. If Zebedee was worth a cool million, I might wear a coal-hod on my head, if I chose, with perfect impunity. There was that old nabob's wife at lecture, the other night, in a dress that might have been made for Noah's great-grandmother. She can afford it! Now if it rains knives and forks, I must sport a ten dollar hat, a forty dollar dress, and a hundred dollar shawl. If I go to a concert, I must take the highest priced seat, and ride there and back, just to let 'Tom, Dick and Harry' see that I can afford it. Then we must hire the most expensive pew in the broad-aisle of a tip-top church, and give orders to the sexton not