In the days of my boyhood, when I was a sophomore of C-college, I once had occasion to travel through P- a large New-England town, on my route to my alma mater, and we passed the large school-house just as the girls came pouring forth, at the close of the afternoon lessons. The stage stopped at a hotel near, and I, with one or two others of about my own appearance and calibre, strolled up the street to take a look at them. Boys are not always very gentlemanly, nor girls ladylike; and in this instance the bounds of good manners were certainly overstepped. There was one young lady who attracted my attention as being particularly pretty, and in an effort to be smart in her hearing, I said to my companions: 'Behold the future mothers of the land!'

The future statesmen and orators!' immediately rejoined one of the girls. Lou., do you hear those impudent fellows?'

Yes,' replied Miss Lou., who was the one to whom I had taken a fancy; and turning her head, she said with great archness:

'THE green young saplings which we see,
Advancing, grow to trees;

Behold! how rich the land must be
To bear such sprouts as these!'

Whereupon they all laughed merrily, and then ran away. We had paused to hear her speech, but they gave us no chance to answer; so we returned to the hotel, feeling very much as if we had had the worst of it. But that graceful form, that comical expression, and above all,

that bright face, haunted me for weeks after I returned to my studies, and were the beau ideal of many a sonnet and improvized romance. In truth, I never forgot her; and circumstances in after years brought to my knowledge the whole history of her who was my boyhood's dream. This was so unlike the history of heroines in general, that I have thought it worthy of being written, in the hope that the events of our lives may benefit others, if any there be who can profit by their neighbors' experience. Indeed I sometimes think that the heroes and heroines of novels and tales have as many, if not more, practical followers than the sages and apostles of wisdom.

Thus, while I went on my way, musing on my unknown beauty, fancying her in all manner of romantic situations-in carriages, on horseback, by the side of precipices, in splendid drawing-rooms, in hair-breadth escapes, beset with unfit suitors, or teazed by stingy or tyrannical (and always rich) relations, for there is no manner of situation in life except the right one in which I did not place her- behold! she went on her way to her home. This was in one of the most obscure streets of the town, in a very mean, unpainted, little, one-story house. Here she seated herself upon an old frame of a chair, with a piece of skin tied in it for a bottom. She laid the slate and two or three books she had carried in her arms on the floor beside her, and commenced chatting to a fat, old, hard-working character who was there, diligently making tea and johnny-cake for supper.

6

Mother,' said the girl, as we came from school we saw the stagepassengers getting out, and among them were some of the boys going to college. We said something about them which I think the fellows overheard, for they turned round and looked after us.'

'I'll warrant you made a grammet at them,' said the mother; but the girl continued, without heeding:

'I wish Tom could go to college.'

'Tom go to college!' exclaimed the old woman, laughing at the idea. 'Yes, why not? Tom is as smart a boy as any in his school:

'A MAN a locomotive is,

Steam raising every hour;

And Toм within that head of his
Has got a twelve-horse power.

Sometimes I think that if I could get something to do, maybe we both together could send him. I should so love to see Tom a gentleman!' P'shaw, gal! your wits are turned, through going to school. If I can get Tom 'prenticed to a good trade, as his father was before him, he 'll be gentleman enough for me. But I should like to hear how you would set about getting the money.'

'Why, you know, Aunt Louisa keeps a boarding-house in BWell now, mother, if you would give me all the money I could make on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, and mornings and evenings, and other odd times, by helping you, I think I could get enough to go and make her a visit. You know I am named after her: perhaps she would put me in the way of doing something. Bis a large place.' Here Louisa paused a moment. In truth, she had no very definite idea of what she wished her aunt to do for her; but she desired greatly

to make her a visit. Her hope by day and her dream by night was, by some means or other, to obtain for herself and her brother a station in that rank of life from which poverty now debarred them. Once at her aunt's house, she would have one step taken on the ladder of her ambition. Great projects are never born full-grown. Like every earthly thing, they have their infancy, their childhood, their youth, and their maturity, and death arrests them at any stage.

Meantime, to divert her mother from a more close inquiry until her plans should be fully ripened, she related a number of histories she had read of men who had become distinguished, from the humblest situations in life, until the old woman was quite bewildered with what had been told her; for she was profoundly ignorant, not being able even to read. Yet she was one who had been cast in nature's noblest mould; or, to speak after Doctor Johnson's celebrated simile, she was a most beautiful and available block of marble, which had lain unsought and unfound in the wide wilderness of poverty. But He who knoweth the hiding-place of every jewel had not created her nor her great soul in vain, although but the widow of a poor mechanic, and reduced to maintain herself and her two children by taking in washing and ironing. Strong, healthy, and cheerful by nature, accustomed always to spend what she earned, and as she earned it, she had no idea of saving money, nor any ability to calculate the amount she could save. so Louisa; she could count, and she could calculate.

Not

Ignorant people have very little notion of the virtue of education : but Mrs. Goldensoul loved her children; they were her pets. When little, it had been a pleasure rather than a task to her strong nerves and hardened muscles to wash and dress them neat and clean; and when so washed and dressed, she behooved to have some object for which to do it. School! that was where other people's children went, and it appeared a very fit place to send them to display their pretty frocks and faces; and then they looked so sweet, walking off together, that it was a sufficient inducement to send them just to see them go. In process of time the children began to have their little school ambitions and cares. Their mother was their confidant, and they were her companions. She rejoiced in their successes and sympathized with their troubles; until, from the ascendancy which knowledge is sure to gain over ignorance, she came to look upon their acquirements as miraculous, and to be almost entirely influenced by their opinions. Not above her business herself, she had not taught her children to be so; and Louisa, as she assisted at the ironing-table and related to her mother the wonders of history and science, made a most agreeable associate; and what marvel if she became at length the master-spirit? Had she professed to have obtained the secret of alchemy, or to have found Aladdin's lamp (which, by the way, I think she had; but that will appear), her mother would have believed her undoubtingly. Happily and wisely is it ordered by Providence that the general tendency of learning is to improve the heart and liberalize the understanding; and to their praise be it spoken, those who have the charge of schools generally attend to the moral training of those they educate. But neither had the mother omitted to send her children to the Sunday

school; and, by so doing, had unwittingly provided another antidote to the dangers of her own ignorance and blind affection.

With this insight into their circumstances, it is not surprising that Louisa obtained her mother's consent to her proposition, and what was more important, succeeded in inspiring her with some sort of faith in it; albeit the mother's hope looked not beyond a situation as schoolteacher or milliner's apprentice. Far otherwise the daughter. When has ever youth set bounds to its imaginings, or ardent fancy chained itself to slow-moving reason? Her head was now quite filled with this half-formed scheme. She was a conqueror, in her way, as great as many whom poets have sung and historians lauded; for she laid plans and overcame difficulties. Hers was no visionary head to dream for idle hands. Eminently practical was she in all her views; at least so would her biographer have written, had she been one of the beforementioned heroes. With diligent hands, with industry early and late, at an exercise far from unhealthy, and with a mind buoyed up by hope, she exerted her talents; and her health, instead of suffering, was even improved thereby. It cost her some qualms of school-acquired pride as she went with the little brother for whom she was to do such great things to fetch and carry the enormous bundles of clothes; but, No matter, Tom,' said she :'

ALADDIN rubbed a magic lamp

For wealth and great renown,

And we with these old clothes must tramp

To bring our castle down.

'He did but rub the lamp, and brought

A genius to his side;

And I shall rub the clothes for naught

But rank and wealth allied.

For what is magic but the ways

Of knowledge, work and care?
It needs but have these three to raise
A genius any where!"

Tom expressed sufficient approbation of the rhymes; and Louisa, having, as usual when annoyed, got rid of her trouble by measuring it out, hugged her project to her heart, and exercise kept her from dyspepsia.

Time sped; the little pile of money soon increased, and the moderate sum required was at last told over. The doting mother hated to part with her darling, and Tom wished that he could go also; but the minds of all three were so completely imbued with the hope of prosperity, that no objection was made; and Louisa, with her small means and great anticipations, went on her way to the city, where no one would recognise her as the washerwoman's daughter.

Aunt Louisa Moskey, as hinted above, kept a boarding-house; one of those numberless establishments which abound in large cities, where economy is the means and end, the plan and result, of every department, and where dwell persons desirous of economizing; poverty and avarice associating and consoling each other. Here were the medical student and the merchant's clerk, the poor lawyer and the rich bankrupt, the independent young lady, whose age is among forgotten things,