lips. But oh! the children. Their skins are red, yet spare them; Hannah Duston, spare these seven little ones, for the sake of the seven that have fed at your own breast! Seven,' quoth Mrs. Duston to herself. Eight children have I borne, and where are the seven, and where is the eighth?' The thought nerved her arm; and the coppercoloured babes slept the same dead sleep with their Indian mothers. Of all that family, only one woman escaped, dreadfully wounded, and fled shrieking into the wilderness; and a boy, whom, it is said, Mrs. Duston had meant to save alive. But he did well to flee from the raging tigress! There was little safety for a redskin when Hannah Duston's blood was up.

The work being finished, Mrs. Duston laid hold of the long black hair of the warriors, and the women, and the children, and took all their ten scalps, and left the island, which bears her name to this day. According to our notion it should be held accursed for her sake. Would that the

bloody old hag had been drowned in crossing Contocook river, or that she had sunk over head and ears in a swamp, and been there buried, till summoned forth to confront her victims at the day of judgment; or that she had gone astray and been starved to death in the forest, and nothing ever seen of her again, save her skeleton with the ten scalps twisted round it for a girdle! But, on the contrary, she and her companions came safe home, and received the bounty on the dead Indians, besides liberal presents from private gentlemen, and fifty pounds from the Governor of Maryland. In her old age, being sunk into decayed circumstances, she claimed, and we believe received, a pension, as a further price of blood.

This awful woman and that tender-hearted man, her husband, will be remembered as long as the deeds of old times are told round a New England fireside. But how different

is her renown from his!

APRIL FOOLS.

It is a curious fact, that the custom of making April fools prevails in the most widely separated regions of the globe, and that, everywhere, its origin is hidden in remote antiquity. The Hindoos on the Ganges practise it; in all the European countries it exists, in one shape or another; the French make what they call April Fish; and, in America, it is one of the few mirthful customs brought from merry old England. When once such a fashion was established, we should suppose that human nature might be pretty safely trusted to keep it up. It is desirable to have the privilege of saying, on one day in the year-what we perhaps think everyday-that our acquaintances are fools. But the false refinement of the present age

has occasioned the rites of the holiday to fall into desuetude. It is not unreasonable to conjecture, that this child's play, as it has now become, was, when originally instituted, a vehicle for the strongest satire which mankind could wreak upon itself. The people of antiquity, we may imagine, used to watch each other's conduct throughout the year, and assemble on All Fools' Day, to pass judgment on what they had observed. Whoever, in any respect, had gone astray from reason and common sense, the community were licensed to point the finger, and laugh at them for an April fool. How many, we wonder, whether smooth-chinned or grey-bearded, would be found so wise in great and little matters, as to escape the pointed finger and the laugh.

It is a pity that this excellent old custom has so degenerated. Much good might still result from such a festival of foolery; for, though our own individual follies are too intimately blended with our natures to be seen or felt, yet the dullest of us are sufficiently acute in detecting the foolery of our

neighbours. Let us, by way of example, point our finger at a few of the sage candidates for the honours of All Fools' day.

He who has wasted the past year in idleness, neglecting his opportunities of honourable exertion; he who has learnt nothing good, nor weeded his mind of anything evil; he who has been heaping up gold, and thereby gained as many cares and inquietudes as there are coins in his strong box; he who has reduced himself from affluence to poverty, whether by riotous living or desperate speculations; these four are April fools. He who has climbed, or suffered himself to be lifted, to a station for which he is unfit, does but stand upon a pedestal, to show the world an April fool. The grey-haired man, who has sought the joys of wedlock with a girl in her teens, and the young girl who has wedded an old man for his wealth, are a pair of April fools. The married couple, who have linked themselves for life, on the strength of a week's liking; the ill-matched pair, who turn their roughest sides toward each other, instead of