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HIS TIME FOR FIDDLING.-M. QUAD.

A Bible canvasser, meandering along the street, halted before a tumble-down tenement. A small, lame girl opened the door in answer to his knock, and just as he entered, a man sitting on the edge of a forlorn-looking bed raised a fiddle to his shoulder, and commenced scraping out a tune.

"Have you a Bible in the house?" asked the canvasser, as he crossed the room.

"Nary Bibe," answered the man; "and

"Old Dan Tucker

Dreamt a dream-'"

"Or a hymn book?" continued the canvasser. "No, nary; and—

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"I am agent for the sale of this Bible," said the canvasser, taking the volume out of his satchel.

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Couldn't buy one cover, and

"Oh, darkies! how my heart grows weary,
Sighing for the old folks at home.'

"I can sell you the book for a small amount down, and the balance in weekly payments. A great many--" "Bibuls are all right, but I've got a sore foot, and"""Twas a calm still night,

And the moon's pale light-'”

"If you do not care to read the book yourself, you should not refuse your child permission,” remarked the canvasser. "And the old woman up stairs sick with fever, and—

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They have taken her to Georgia,
For to wear her life away-"'

"But it seems hard to think that you are permitting yourself and family to live in ignorance of religious—”

"Bibuls is all right, and I'd encourage 'em if times wasn't so awful

"Ha, ha, ha! you and me!

Little brown jug, don't I love thee!""

"I have a smaller edition like this. You can have that by paying fifty cents down and twenty-five cents per week until paid up."

"No use, stranger," replied the man; "there ha'n't nothing to do, money is tight, and

"I've wandered this wide world all over-""

"I wish you would cease that fiddling and singing for a moment, and let me talk to you," said the agent. "Bibuls is all right, you is all right, and— "Oh! this world is sad and dreary, Everywhere I roam.'"

"Won't you stop for just one moment?"

I'd like to oblige you, but now's my reg'lar time for fiddl ing and singing, and—

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"Then I can't sell you a Bible?"
"Don't look as if you could, for-

"I've wandered through the village, Tom,
I've sat beneath the tree.'"

And the canvasser left the house in despair.

CATALOGUE OF DICKENS' WORKS.

Oliver Twist who had some very Hard Times in the Battle of Life, and having been saved from The Wreck of the Golden Mary by Our Mutual Friend, Nicholas Nickleby, had just finished reading A Tale of Two Cities to Martin Chuzzlewit, during which time The Cricket on the Heurth had been chirping merrily while The Chimes from an adjacent church were heard when Seven Poor Travelers from Mugby Junction commenced singing A Christmas Carol; Barnaby Rudge then arrived from The Old Curiosity Shop with some Pictures from Italy, and Sketches by Boz, to show to Little Dorrit, who was busy with the Pickwick Papers, when David Copperfield, who had been taking American Notes, entered and informed the company that the Great Expectations of Dombey and Son regarding Mrs. Lirripur's Legacy had not been realized; and that he had seen Boots at the Inn taking Somebody's Luggage to Mrs. Lirripur's Lodgings in a street that has No Thoroughfare, opposite Bleak House; where the Haunted Man, who had just given one of Doctor Marigold's Prescriptions to an Uncommercial Traveler, was brooding over the Mystery of Edwin Drood.

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A LEGEND OF BREGENZ.-A. A. PROCTOR.

Girt round with rugged mountains the fair Lake Constance lies;

In her blue heart reflected, shine back the starry skies; And watching each white cloudlet float silently and slow, You think a piece of heaven lies on our earth below!

Midnight is there: and silence enthroned in heaven, looks down

Upon her own calm mirror, upon a sleeping town:
For Bregenz, that quaint city upon the Tyrol shore,
Has stood above Lake Constance, a thousand years and more.

Her battlements and towers, upon their rocky steep,
Have cast their trembling shadows for ages on the deep;
Mountain, and lake, and valley, a sacred legend know,
Of how the town was saved one night, three hundred years
ago.

Far from her home and kindred, a Tyrol maid had fled,
To serve in the Swiss valleys, and toil for daily bread;
And every year that fleeted so silently and fast,

Seemed to bear farther from her the memory of the past.

She served kind, gentle masters, nor asked for rest or change; Her friends seemed no more new ones, their speech seemed no more strange;

And when she led her cattle to pasture every day,

She ceased to look and wonder on which side Bregenz lay.

She spoke no more of Bregenz, with longing and with tears;
Her Tyrol home seemed faded in a deep mist of years;
She heeded not the rumors of Austrian war or strife;
Each day she rose contented, to the calm toils of life.

Yet, when her master's children would clustering round her stand,

She sang them the old ballads of her own native land;
And when at morn and evening she knelt before God's

throne,

The accents of her childhood rose to her lips alone.

And so she dwelt: the valley more peaceful year by year; When suddenly strange portents of some great deed seemed

near.

The golden corn was bending upon its fragile stalk, While farmers, heedless of their fields, paced up and down in talk.

The men seemed stern and altered, with looks cast on the ground;

With anxious faces, one by one, the women gathered round;
All talk of flax, or spinning, or work, was put away;
The very children seemed afraid to go alone to play.

One day, out in the meadow with strangers from the town,
Some secret plan discussing, the men walked up and down.
Yet now and then seemed watching a strange uncertain
gleam,

That looked like lances 'mid the trees that stood below the stream.

At eve they all assembled, all care and doubt were fled; With jovial laugh they feasted, the board was nobly spread. The elder of the village rose up, his glass in hand,

And cried, "We drink the downfall of an accursed land!

"The night is growing darker, ere one more day is flown, Bregenz, our foemen's stronghold, Bregenz shall be our

own!"

The women shrank in terror, (yet pride, too, had her part,)
But one poor Tyrol maiden felt death within her heart.

Before her, stood fair Bregenz, once more her towers arose;
What were the friends beside her? Only her country's foes!
The faces of her kinsfolk, the days of childhood flown,
The echoes of her mountains reclaimed her as their own!

Nothing she heard around her, (though shouts rang forth again,)

Gone were the green Swiss valleys, the pasture, and the plain;

Before her eyes one vision, and in her heart one cry,

That said, "Go forth, save Bregenz, and then if need be, die!" With trembling haste and breathless, with noiseless step she sped;

Horses and weary cattle were standing in the shed;

She loosed the strong white charger, that fed from out her hand,

She mounted and she turned his head toward her native land.

Out-out into the darkness-faster, and still more fast; The smooth grass flies behind her, the chestnut wood is passed;

She looks up; clouds are heavy: Why is her steed so slow?-Scarcely the wind beside them, can pass them as they go. "Faster!" she cries, “Oh, faster!" Eleven the church-bells chime;

"O God," she cries, "help Bregenz, and bring me there in time!"

But louder than bells' ringing, or lowing of the kine,
Grows nearer in the midnight the rushing of the Rhine.
Shall not the roaring waters their headlong gallop check?
The steed draws back in terror, she leans above his neck
To watch the flowing darkness, the bank is high and steep,
One pause-he staggers forward, and plunges in the deep.
She strives to pierce the blackness, and looser throws the
rein;

Her steed must breast the waters that dash above his mane.
How gallantly, how nobly, he struggles through the foam,
And see—in the far distance, shine out the lights of home!
Up the steep bank he bears her, and now they rush again
Towards the heights of Bregenz, that tower above the plain.
They reach the gate of Bregenz, just as the midnight rings,
And out come serf and soldier to meet the news she brings.
Bregenz is saved! Ere daylight her battlements are manned;
Defiance greets the army that marches on the land.
And if to deeds heroic should endless fame be paid,
Bregenz does well to honor the noble Tyrol maid.

Three hundred years are vanished, and yet upon the hill
An old stone gateway rises, to do her honor still.
And there, when Bregenz women sit spinning in the shade,
They see in quaint old carving the charger and the maid.

And when, to guard old Bregenz, by gateway, street, and tower,

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The warder paces all night long, and calls each passing hour: "Nine," "ten," eleven," he cries aloud, and then (O crown of fame!)

When midnight pauses in the skies he calls the maiden's

name.

CHARLES SUMNER.-CARL SCHURZ.

There was in Charles Sumner, as a public man, a peculiar power of fascination. It acted much through his eloquence, but not through his eloquence alone. There was still another source from which that fascination sprang. Behind all he said and did there stood a grand manhood, which never failed to make itself felt. What a figure he was, with his tall and stalwart frame, his manly face, topped with his shaggy locks, his noble bearing, the finest type of American senatorship, the tallest oak of the forest!

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