Julia's head and lovely throat, unable to draw
the rest of her away, compromised; they turned,
declined, drooped, and rested one half moment
on her captor's shoulder, like a settling dove: the
next, she scudded from him, and made for the
house alone.

Mrs. Dodd, deeply indignant, but too wise to
court a painful interview with her own heart
beating high, went into the drawing-room: and
there sat down, to recover some little composure.
But she was hardly seated when Julia's innocent
voice was heard calling "Mamma! mamma!"
and soon she came bounding into the drawing-
room, brimful of good news, her cheeks as
red as fire, and her eyes wet with happy
tears; and there confronted her mother, who
had started up at her footstep, and now, with
one hand nipping the back of the chair
convulsively, stood lofty, looking strangely agitated
and hostile.

The two ladies eyed one another, silent, yet
expressive; like a picture facing a statue; but soon
the colour died out of Julia's face as well, and
she began to cower with vague fears before that
stately figure, so gentle and placid usually, but
now so discomposed and stern.

              PANAMA AS A HOME.

THAT English man or woman of average intellect,
education, and civilisation should be, by
circumstances best known to themselves,
condemned to settle down in this particular spot of
land nine degrees distance from the equator,
will strike an English reader as having fallen
on lines of a hard nature. Let him judge for
himself.

To these particular lines, then, destiny affixed
the names of my brother and myself; falling
straight upon this little midland neck of the New
World, we felt destiny would we should follow,
and follow we did. Aly brother was a merchant;
I, his sister and housekeeper, accompanied him.
We had pretty courageous hearts, and only our
two unmarried selves to care for. In the Old
World jogging on together, in the New, why not?
We will make the best of everything. With
such our watchword we answered the various
arguments used first to dissuade and disgust us
from going, afterwards by fellow-passengers who
liked to magnify every horror and give unpleasant
impressions by their various descriptions of the
following encouraging nature.

English, French, Germans, Spanish, Portuguese,
West Indians, Spanish South Americans
—we were a mixed medley enough. There was a
corpulent gentleman, very black in skin, very
white in linen and waistcoats, and a yellow lady,
his wife—Martinique people returning home.
The lady wore a Paris bonnet when she landed
at St. Thomas, and the most delicate of flounced
silks, white kid gloves and bronzed boots; the
gentleman was of a facetious and gallant nature;
he would place his shiny black hand on his
white waistcoat, would bow profoundly when
addressing a lady, and his laugh bore a family
resemblance to that of Mr. Christy's minstrels.
There was a young Limanian gentleman bound
Lima-wards, of an indolent, somewhat insolent
nature, who, lounging about in a gay dressing-
gown, handsome, but not over-clean, an.
unshorn face, and no visible shirt, yawned away
his day, cursing the fate that brought him into
a floating prison, and amusing himself with a
malignant satisfaction by disenchanting all the
innocent adventurers, like ourselves, bound to
new lands for the first time.

"Panama!" he echoed, contemptuously, when,
my brother informed him of our destination;
"a hell upon earth! a sink of yellow fever, of
intermittent fever and ague, of dirt, of fiery
burning heat—overrun with Yankees."

"Panama!" cried another, with a derisive
laugh; "give you joy of it. Thermometer
ranges from 96 deg. to 110 deg. in the shade.
If you live six months, thank your stars."

"Well," a third gentleman observes placidly,
"I never lived there, myself, thank God, but
I've crossed the isthmus, and I've been three
days in the dirty town. The air of the isthmus
laid me prostrate with fever, and the bells sent
me raving mad while I lay sick, that's all I know
of Panama."

"Nonsense," said my brother, when I discussed
these remarks with him; "never believe
any one's word till you can judge for yourself;"
and so encouraged, I agreed to make the best of
it, as usual.

The sunbeams fell hot and fierce on the little
Yankeefied town of Aspinwall or Colon, when
we got in. A strange unearthly howl reached
our ears from the shore, which I, in my innocence,
vaguely imagined to be the howl of wild
beasts! This was the train.

Aspinwallers are attached to their small spot
of swamp. "Oh, it's very superior to Panama."
(Panama is the rival city.) "It is decidedly
healthier, decidedly cooler, decidedly cleaner."
In Aspinwall no greater encouragement awaited
us. Poor Panama was evidently the bugbear
of the world, great and small.

Now this I will maintain, that you may
travel far and wide before you will see stranger,
wilder, finer forest scenery arid vegetation than
that of the Panama isthmus, as you tear through
a vast silent forest, where giant trees—compared
to which our largest English oaks are as
toys—where the mango, the guava, the palm,
untouched by man's hand, grow and produce
and reproduce till millions and millions
multiply; truly the sight of God's work and
man's labour brought into such strange
incongruous contact, gives rise to new and stirring
thoughts.

By this passage the New World, cut in half,
has been, as it were, united, not without hard,
fearful labour, struggle, and death: the road
was strewed with dead labourers—victims of
fever, exhaustion, suicide, like a battle-field. An
object was gained through bloodshed—as battles
are gained. It is a solemn thought when one
passes through.