a cathedral stall, and by cock and pye, I
will not budge! You may threaten to
disestablish and disendow me, but I will carry
my stall about with me, as old gentlemen
at the sea-side carry their camp-stools.
And if at last, by means of a measure forced
on an unwilling nation by ministers more
abandoned in their principles, Sir, than
Sejanus, Empson, Dudley, Polignac, Peyronnet,
or the late Sir Robert Walpole, you
declare that my stall no longer exists, you
shall compensate me for it at a rate as
rich as though I had always had it clamped
with gold, and stuffed with bank notes.

TO A LITTLE HUSWIFE.
O little Huswife clean and spruce,
Thy use one heart divines;
A rosy apple, full of juice,
And polish' d—till it shines!
A tidy, tripping, tender thing,
A foe to lazy litters,.
A household angel, tidying
Till all around thee glitters!

To see thee in thy loveliness,
So prudish and so chaste;
No speck upon the cotton dress
Girdled around thy waist;
The ankle peeping white as snow
Thy tuck'd-up kirtle under;
"While shining dishes, row on row,
Behind thee, stare and wonder!

"While round thy door the millions call,
"While the great markets fill,
Tho' public sorrow strike us all,
Singing thou workest still;
Yea, all thy care and all thy lot
Is ever, sweet and willing,
To keep one little household spot
As clean as a new shilling!

The crimson kitchen firelight dips
Thy cheeks until they glow;
The white flour makes thy finger tips
Like rosebuds dropt in snow,
When all thy little gentle heart
Flutters in exultation
To compass, in an apple tart,
Thy noblest aspiration!

O Huswife, may thy modest worth
Keep ever free from wrong.
Blest be the house and bright the hearth
Thou blessest all day long!
And nightly, may thy sleep be sound,
While o'er thee, softly, stilly,
The curtains close, like leaves around
The husht heart of the lily!

AN EXPERIENCE.

IN TWO CHAPTERS. CHAPTER II.

WHEN I was again aware of anything
that could have belonged to the real world—
and not to the dreadful world of horrors,
some terrible, some grotesque, in which
my diseased brain had, during an
inexplicable period, lived such life as it had
known—I was in my own room in
Strathcairn-street. One of the first things I
consciously noticed and thought about, was
the fact that my bed had been moved,
from the sleeping and dressing closet in
which it usually stood, out into the open
room.

My dreamy eyes took this fact in slowly;
after a while, my drowsy brain languidly
decided that this meant I had been some
time ill, and that the bed had been moved
in order to give me more air.

This settled, my weak mind was free to
take note of, and feebly to speculate about,
other facts.

A woman sat at work not far from my
bedside. Which of the hospital nurses
would this be, I wondered. She was working
by the light of a shaded lamp. This
was night, then, I supposed, or, at least,
evening.

Was it summer or winter?

There was no fire burning in the grate,
and, by the moving to and fro of a blind, I
knew a window was open; so I concluded
it was summer.

Night-time and summer-time. I had,
then, settled something.

Next, who was this woman? I seemed
to need to settle this also.

I could not see her face from where I
lay. I watched the swift out-flying and
return of the busy hand, and wondered
about her, and impatiently fretted for her
to turn round towards me, that I might
see her face.

But she worked on.

I remember a lady once saying to me
(long years after this time, but when she
said it this scene returned upon me),
"Work, indeed! needle-work!" she spoke
with a bitter intonation and an infinite
contempt. " Amuse myself with my
needle! How often have I been counselled
to do that! Such a sweet, soothing, quiet,
gracious employment! So it is, for the
satisfied, the happy, the occupied.
Nothing can be sweeter than to sit at one's
needle through a long summer-day, and
dream over one's happiness, and think out
one's thoughts. But if one be not happy,
and if one's thoughts be dangerous? Or,
if one be utterly weary and ennuyée, and
the mind seems empty of all thought?

"To you men it is all one. To see
a woman sitting at her needle makes you
content. You think she is safe, out of
mischief, just sufficiently amused, and so
suitably occupied! Not too much engrossed
to be ready to listen to and to serve your
lordships; not so far ennuyée as to be
disposed to make exacting claims upon
your attention and your sympathy.