wheat was sold, the money paid, and then for the trade. The baby was shifted from shoulder to shoulder, or set down upon the floor, to run off into mischief like a sparkling globule of quicksilver on a marble table, while calicoes were priced, sugar and tea tasted, and plates "rung." The good wife looks askance at a large mirror that would be just the thing for the best room, and the roll of carpeting of most becoming pattern; but it won't do; they must wait till next year. Ah! there is music in those

next years that Orchestras cannot make!

And so they look, and price, and purchase the winter supplies, the husband the while eying the little roll of bank-notes, "growing small by degrees and beautifully less." Then comes an 'aside' conference, particularly confidential. She takes him affectionately by the button, and looks up in his face-she has fine eyes by the by-with an expression eloquent of "do, now; it will please them so." And what do you suppose they talk of? Toys for the children; John wanted a drum, and Jane a doll, and Jenny a little book all pictures, “just like Susan so-and-so's.” The father looks "nonsense;" but he feels in his pocket for the required silver, and the mother, having gained the point, hastens away, baby and all, for the

toys. There acts the mother-she had half promised, not all, that she would bring them something, and she is happy all the way home, not for the bargains she made, but for the pleasant surprises in those three brown parcels. And you ought to have been there, when they got home; when the drum, and the doll, and the book were produced-and thumped, and cradled, and thumbed-wasn't it a great house!

Happiness is so cheap, what a wonder there is not more of it in the world!

Aerial Rehearsal.

LAST night, the moon, with a new coat of silver, rode high in the west, while in the north and northeast, pure, pearly white overlaid the blue-then deepened to an orange-then turned to a crimson, till it looked like the pillar of fire in the wilderness, or a Daguerreotype of sunset.

Anon it changed; the crimson was pink; the blue, a blush; and the pearl, a delicate green.

What they were doing up aloft, is more than I know; whether rehearsing sunset or sunrise, 'shifting

scenes' for the never-before-performed drama of Tomorrow, or spreading out rainbows on the upper decks to dry, is to me a mystery.

Now and then, white, silvery-looking spars were lifted up from the northern horizon, and converged in the zenith; and it occurred to me, that, may be, they were repairing this great blue tent we live under, and that I saw the bare spars and the red linings of the curtains that were thrown up, to keep them out of the way of the aerial craftsmen.

And then again, as it crimsoned, and pearled, and clouded so exquisitely, I fancied it might be Heaven's grand pattern for sea-shells to tint by, discovered at last.

And once more, ere I had quite made up my mind on this conjecture, such a beam, nay, cloud of red light streamed out into the night, and over the stars, one would be sure it must come from Heaven's painted window, and that some body—perhaps some body we once knew and loved, and love still-was passing to and fro, giving us, without the walls, a glimpse or two of the glory within.

As I kept looking, I kept fancying, and who knew that it might not be the evening of some forgotten and long-past yesterday, thus revisiting the glimpses

of the moon'—one that you and I loved, and have sighed for, more than we would care to tell, and would give a dozen to-morrows to see again.

As I looked, it changed, and the whole heaven from far below the Dipper to the Zenith, was a flutter. Through the silver lace-work shone the stars, and the blue, and the galaxy itself. What could it be, but the dim scarfs of the loved and lost, thus waved in token of remembrance to the earth beneath? And why not? How beautiful and how calm lay that earth beneath the great Argus sky! The eyes of hundreds were turned towards Heaven, that during the broad and glaring day forget there is a Heaven, and a treasure in it. They remembered it then, and were remembered in turn. Ah! if our fancies were only half true!

The books call it Aurora Borealis-what do we care for the books?—and the philosophers declare it is electrical in its origin; a fig for the philosophers! The books of memory and the human heart were printed and collated before that conceited old German they tell of, ever cut a type; and as for philosophy, there is more wisdom in a thought thus tinted with a ray shining through last night from yesterday, than

Seneca, or any body this side of Solomon, ever thought of.

But while I gazed and mused, the vision vanished, the window was curtained, the rehearsal over, the sea-shells taught their lesson, the tent as good as new,' the last scene shifted, and the old yesterday faded out.

Domestic Enchantment.

SOMETHING very mysterious over to CHARLES', yesterday. All the children belonging to all the neighbors were cautioned not to 'come a-near,' and RUSH went dashing off to town, like a king's courier, and there was much talk among the feminines, that grew beautifully inaudible at my approach.

Whatever it was, or would be, it created a strange commotion in all the region round about. At our house, bureau-drawers tumbled out their treasures of flannels and linens; closets and upper shelves were ransacked for saffron and catnip; time-tinted papers of pink and senna were disturbed, amid barbless fishhooks, broken awls, and rusty gimlets.