man, who changed her mind very often, and whose feelings were always betraying her. The funeral had been early, and the distant visitors had been able to leave in good time, so that there was no need for a large luncheon party; and the lawyer and a cousin of Mr. Warrender's were the only strangers who shared that meal with the mother and son. Then, as a proper period had now been arrived at, and as solicitors rush in where heirs fear to tread, open questions were asked about the plans of the family and what Theo meant to do. He said at once, "I see no need for plans. Why should there be any discussion of plans? So far as outward circumstances go, what change is there? My mother and the girls will just go on as usual, and I, of course, will go back to Oxford. It will be more than a year before I can take my degree."

He thought - but no doubt he must have been mistaken that a blank look came over his mother's face; but it was so impossible that she could have thought of anything else that he dismissed the idea from his mind. She said nothing, but Mr. Longstaffe replied,

"At present that is no doubt the wisest way; but I think it is always well that people should understand each other at once and provide for all emergencies, so that there may be no wounded feeling, or that sort of thing, hereafter. You know, Mrs. Warrender, that the house in Highcombe has always been the jointure house?"

"Yes," she said, with a certain liveliness in her answer, almost eagerness. My husband has often told me so." "We are authorized to put it in perfect repair, and you are authorized to choose whatever you please out of the furniture at the Warren to make it according to your taste. Perhaps we had better do that at once, and put it into your hands. If you don't live there, you can let it, or lend it, or make some use of it."

"It might be convenient," Mrs. Warrender said, with a slight hesitation, "if Theodore means, as I suppose he does, to carry out improvements here."

And yet she had implored him yesterday not to make many alterations! Theo felt a touch of offense with his mother. He began to think there was something in the things the girls used to say, that you never knew when you had mamma, or whether she might not turn upon you in a moment. She grew much more energetic, all at once, and even her figure lost the slight stoop of languor that was in it. "If you are going to cut any trees, or do any drainage, Theo, we could all live there while the works went on."

He gave a slight start in person, and a much greater in spirit, and a fastidious curve came to his forehead. "I don't know that I shall cut any trees now. You know you said the other day, We can talk of that after."

"Oh, yes, it is early days," said the lawyer. "Of course it is not as if there were other heirs coming in, or any compulsory division were to be made. You can take your time. But I have always observed that things went smoother when it was understood from the first, in case of a certain emergency arising, or new conditions of any kind, so and so should follow. You understand what I mean."

"It is always wisest," said the Warrender cousin, "to have it all put down hard and fast, so that nobody may be disappointed, whatever should happen. Of course Theo will marry."

"I hope so," said his mother, permitting herself to smile. "Of course he will marry," said the lawyer.

"But he had better take his degree first," the cousin added, feeling that he had distinguished himself; "aud in the mean time the girls and you will have time to look about you. Highcombe is rather a dull place. And then the house

is large. You could not get on in it with less than four or five servants." "Four would do," said Mr. Longstaffe.

"And supposing my cousin kept a pony chaise, or something? She could not get on without a pony chaise. That means another."

Theodore pushed back his chair from the table with a harsh peremptoriness, startling them all. "I am sure my mother does n't want to go into these calculations," he said; "neither do I. Leave us alone to settle what we find to be best."

"Dear me," said cousin Warrender,

Harriet Prescott Spofford.

"AND why the New Portfolio, I would ask?"

Pray, do you remember, when there was an accession to the nursery in which you have a special interest, whether the new-comer was commonly spoken of as a baby? Was it not, on the contrary, invariably, under all conditions, in all companies, by the whole household, spoken of as the baby? And was the small receptacle provided for it commonly spoken of as a cradle; or was it not always called the cradle, as if there were no other in existence?

Now this New Portfolio is the cradle in which I am to rock my new-born thoughts, and from which I am to lift them carefully from time to time and show them to callers, namely, to the whole family which this monthly visitor reckons on its list of intimates, and such others as may drop in by accident. And so it shall have the definite article, and not be lost in the mob of its fellows as a portfolio.

What can be more natural than that

a reader who has found some little pleasure in the contents of the old worn-out portfolio should take up the new one with the feeling that it can never be to him or her what the earlier one has been? No, my dear friend, it cannot be. You and I were younger when that was opened. It is a very small affair to be illustrated from the Scripture record, and yet you remember the beetle and the giant, alike in one point, though so far apart in many. I am thinking of the old and the new Jewish temple, and the story Ezra tells of them:

But many .. who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice.

It is much more likely that you will smile, dear reader, but I do not think you will laugh. You could hardly be one of my willing readers unless you were capable of feeling instinctively that there is something in this confidence on which I venture, lying deeper than the superficial layer which belongs

to the ridiculous. So much has changed since the older, not the oldest, portfolio was opened for the first number of this magazine! I cannot go back to the feelings with which I wrote, nor you to the feelings with which you read. No matter; we have a good deal left in common yet: air is still sweet to breathe, and ginger is hot in the mouth just as it used to be. Only deal kindly with the New Portfolio at its first opening. It takes a slight effort to open it, and it seems as if it creaked a little. Have patience with it; do not brutalize it with a cynical welcome.

I got a lesson when a young man, which has lasted me a long time. One of my most intimate college friends was married very early, and by and by a cradle appeared in the room christened the nursery, and in the cradle a male infant, of which the young parents were very proud, as a matter of course. Some weeks had passed over its little head, when I, as a friend of the family, was admitted to a view of the young phenomenon. What more natural than to take it from the mother's arms and bear it about the room in triumph? But one must have a good look at one's friend's baby, not smothered up in all sorts of little bed-clothes, or hugged out of sight in the arms of the nurse or the mother, or even in one's own arms. Let us set it down on the floor, and step back and get a good perspective view of the small miracle. Down I plumped the baby in the sitting posture, and over the baby went backward, with such a thump of its poor little head on the floor as if a cannon ball had dropped. Father and mother and baby have been dead many and many a long year, but I can hear that thump and the maternal cry and the infant ululation, and see the rush of the parental pair, and recall the feeling which came over me, more like the condition of Truth in Mr. Bryant's often-quoted verse than anything else I can think of just now. But though

"crushed to earth" I managed to "rise again," and to take with me a lesson which has made me gentle in the handling of all tender offspring of human parentage, whether found in cradles or portfolios.

I am not at this particular time beginning a serial story. What I may find in my portfolio by and by is another matter; if there should be a certain thread of connection between the papers that come from it I do not know that it will render them less interesting. There are, however, a few personal and incidental matters I wish to say something of before getting deep into the real contents of the portfolio.

As I have reminded you, I have had other portfolios before this, two more especially, and the first thing I wish to say relates to these.

Do not throw this number of the magazine down, or turn to another page, when I tell you that I opened my first portfolio more than fifty years ago. This is a very dangerous confession, for fifty years are just enough to make everything hopelessly old-fashioned, and not enough to give anything the charm. of real antiquity. If I could say a hundred years, now, my readers would ac cept all I had to tell them with a curious interest; but fifty years ago, there are too many talkative old people that know all about that time, and at best half a century is a half-baked bit of ware. A coin-fancier would say that your fifty-year-old facts have just enough of antiquity to spot them with rust, and not enough to give them the delicate and durable patina which is time's exquisite enamel.

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When the first portfolio was opened the coin of the realm bore for its legend, or might have borne if the more devout hero-worshippers could have had their way, - Andreas Jackson, Populi Gratia, Imp. Cæsar. Aug. Div. Max., etc., etc. I never happened to see any gold or silver with that legend, but the