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that an eagle had dropped as it flew over the Hut one day. I took ticular care that my beard should go uncombed for a fortnight. My boots were as old as the cow from whose weather-beaten, time-stained hide they had been fabricated. My segar was the oldest that Cuba could give to Young America; and when the sun was just nestling among the bannered pines upon the nearest mountain, (I have mountains near my Hut, of which we will talk by-and-by,) I started with my clerk by my side, Newfoundland Neptune, and with wild-wood humming of old songs out of tune and out of date, entered upon the mystic rite that was to wed my rock to language and sanctify it with syllables. O my merciful God! how grand was all that scene! I saw it with my loving eyes, with a higher feeling than even good kings feel when they look from mountain-tops upon realms their own. I blessed it with more pathos of worship than the good king would bless his people, living, and toiling, and obeying him far down in the green vales of the lower lands. I blessed it and it blessed me. Stepping over the flat stones from the greyish-yellow beach, I at last stood upon the neophyte that was so immediately to enter into the list of the titled aristocracy of Beauty.

Off in the sweet air went my hat, with its eagle feather, and stooping down I raised from the silver current a handful of water and poured it over the brow of my beloved. The little rill fell over a rosebush, and sweetened by its sweetness, it trickled among the mosses and then passed off over the white sides of the rock into the stream again.

I raised my eyes to the blue sky, to the deep mountain regions. I raised my heart, also, and there alone, sweetly alone, in the purple hour, in the gold-and-purple hour, I gave a name to my treasure, to my glory, to my monarch of the stratas, to my statue wrought into grandeur, into gentle outlines, into yielding curves and picturesque angles, into glades, into velvet-covered glades, into prairies of creeping plants, into forests of rose-bushes, by the delicate ARCHITECT who next day made the desert of Africa and swept the continents into formation.

All this time I kept my clerk in the water. He amused himself looking at the water-lilies, and the water-lilies seemed to look at him with their large white orbs, and when I had finished what I considered a sacred pleasure, we sauntered homeward, both meditative in the silence. The moon by this time had risen on her course, and ere I left the gate-way of the wood I turned to look upon my Christian rock. There he was, more beautiful than ever. One tender beam breaking the jagged top of the higher cliff on the opposite shore, fell over the cataracts, and then kissed the new-named idol of the scene.

Tell me, O ye wandering pilgrims of the world! ye ministers of religion, tell me, did I do a profane deed? Did I desecrate a ritual that John of the Jordan, and his MASTER of the Mount have consecrated to our good? Who was that hero-prophet that in the granited wilderness of Syria smote the rock, and from its marble bosom bade the living water flow?

This deed of mine was done in the solitude of the woods, in a place so sacred that murder, tempted by an unguarded Croesus, wandering in the shade, would not have dared to raise his hand to win the gold the

rich man carried in his purse. Done, not in a moment of childish vagrancy, without an all-potent impulse to do a thing, made sacred to men's minds by the pomp of cathedral music and all the show of glasses, stained with rainbow tints, of forms of marble saints and canonized martyrs, of censers swinging their perfume of holy incense on the religious air of the dim aisles and over the glittering altar dazzling with candelabra all a-blaze. This deed of mine was done in the great church of God, where through the blue windows of the air streamed in the golden glory of His setting sun, where the gentle winds and the rushing stream made hymns that David with his harp in old Jerusalem never could have equalled; where the light mists threw up from swiftly-falling floods their smoke of tribute, and where flowers shed their perfume sweeter, and purer, and holier than myrrh and frankincense, and where the gilded trunks of trees stood around the altar of the rocks, and with their graceful traceries gave a halo to the scene, perhaps to the simple deed itself.

CHAPTER SECOND.

My Hut, of which I have given you a drawing, is, as you will have observed, of the composite order of architecture. I am speaking now of he exterior; of the interior I will speak hereafter. That tower is of itself a school of architecture. The roof is modelled after the roof of one of the wings of the Tuileries. It was a bold effort in the mechanic who lifted that stately tower amid the wild and unreclaimed scenery of my home. What secret toiling of thought must have harassed his brain as he sat amid the pines, and elms, and scycamores, within sight und shadow almost of the lofty peaks that lifted their towers amid the cloud-domes to the blue vault of heaven. Long years ago that piece of wooden ambition was lifted into the air to become the target of the winds and the rains, to glitter in the sleet-storms and whiten with the -nows. It is very old, and its logs are covered with green moss; they were left just as they were taken from the woods, with the bark on, and when you stand at a short distance from the tower, when the sun is shining brightly upon it, the whole thing looks like a painter's palette, mottled with such a variety of colors, all so interwoven and blended together, that for the soul of you, you can but sit by the hour at the root of some old tree and gaze and gaze upon it until the impression fixes itself upon your mind, that the hand of some cunning artist has been at work, and has left it covered with copies of wood-mosses, and rock-mosses, and tree-vines, and colors of earthy formations that he has found all about in the forest, and along the river-side, and up among the mountains.

There are two porches, or rather stoops, attached to my tower. From one of them you can see the river coming down from the cascade and the baptized rock, and from the other you can see it widening out to the reedy banks of the opposite shore. I like the view looking up, for it is wilder, and there is more of dash and sparkle in it, though at times I can but sit in the other porch on lazy days, and when there is going to be a warm day, for then in the morning the mist hangs over the tr

quil sheet of water and twines itself in and out among the dense foliage on the opposite bank and winds itself into thin volumes, and I can watch it floating slowly up out of the crowns of the trees and sailing afterward toward the mountain, that with cliff and crag awaits it higher up in the holier air.

There are two windows looking upon the rude lawn by which you approach the Hut. These windows are old-fashioned affairs, and are apt to put you in mind of loop-holes in old turrets in other and older countries than this new land of ours.

MY PORTRAIT FROM AN AMBROTYPE BY BRADY.

In time of war, should I escape being engrafted like an unlucky shoot upon the main arm of our national defence, the militia, I intend to have those windows manned; and should peradventure, an English fleet venture upon an expedition up my river to look into my affairs, all that I can say is, that you will hear about it. A deep ditch cut around the base of the little promontory on which my Hut is situated would serve an excellent purpose; and a bridge, a real draw-bridge, with chains

to let up and down, with a fellow or two with heavily-loaded horsepistols stationed within the portcullis, (is that the technical word that Scott and James have in their novels?) would be very serviceable upon the emergency of the fleet running aground and the troops coming ashore. At present the grounds are fenced in to prevent the inroad of cattle and wandering swine, and if HEAVEN SO wills it, it will conform very much to my comfort and general way of thinking, if the British and other vagrants are kept at a proper distance, should they ever ponder an invasion of my neutral territories.

On the river side of the tower stands an oak, as old almost as the hills. His branches reach to the top of the tower: they did overshadow it, years and years ago, but time with its tempests has cropped the jubilant spirit of my tree, and piteous to relate, he stands in mute dejection, down-hearted, crest-fallen, by the side of the tower, halfenvious of the endurance of such a queer old thing as that, which once he swept over in his days of power, ere the war happened in which he got his wounds. His branches scrape, they used to sweep, the side of the tower, and in the heavy windy nights of spring, there seems to be a constant quarrel going on between the old champions. Upon such occasions the turret threatens with vain boastings and idle vaporings to fall straightway upon the tree, and pound it into saw-dust, and the old oak scratches and pinches the ribs of his neighbor, and chuckling as the tempest whistles around his shorn trunk, seems to say: 'You won't tumble; keep up, old fellow; you will get well shaken to-night, and that mustache of vines you are so proud of, and your moss whiskers, perhaps, won't be as fierce to-morrow as they were this evening when the sun went down: keep up, old Loggerhead, stiffen up your timbers; you can't fall; you are afraid to fall on me, for if you did, the master over in the Hut there would burn you up for kindling-wood. You'd look nice, would n't you, blazing away in the kitchen-chimney, with a wild duck roasting upon you, and spitting fat in your face.' Rock-a-byBaby on the tree top,' the old tower would reply: When the wind blows the cradle will rock,' retorts the oak; and so they keep it up the live-long night, and when the sun comes over the blue giant in the east, he finds his old companions of years standing quietly side by side, the oak leaning like a brother against the bosom of the tower. I may as well tell at once how it happened that I became the owner of this dear old place. I had heard that such a thing was in existence, and was to be had for little or no money. There were causes that I will relate hereafter, that reduced the value of the property in the opinion of the primitive people who lived adjacent; I had been looking for a retreat of some kind, and as there were no monasteries to be got at, and no nunneries that I could get into, I made up my mind to subside into some remote cave, where I could turn into a fossil and so petrify myself out of the knowldge of my fellows. It is unnecessary now for me to enter into the personal causes that induced me to the contemplation of this voluntary exile; sufficient now to know that I was at that moment on horseback, travelling through a sparsely-settled country, and nearing the terminus of my journey.

I had often to inquire the road or path, from straggling farmers,

whom I met as I jogged onward, and I could not but observe the expression of singular surprise with which I was greeted when I made my wishes known sometimes it happened that questions were asked back again, and such queer, droll questions they were too; but I gained a little information from one that lasted me for about two miles; then from another, enough to keep me straight, until I got to the creek, where a log was fallen across; and so, gleaning intelligence as I progressed, I reached at length the Hut.

It was completely dark when I threw the rein upon the horse's neck, and, allowing him to follow me, I advanced by a narrow path, not distinguishable, except by the opening among the trees, and without interruption I soon stood by the door of the house. Every thing seemed to be wrapped in perfect gloom and solitude in and about the place: not a sound was heard, save the distant noise, or as I call it now, the music of the water-fall in the distance, and the dry rustling of leaves as they fell from the trees in the crisp autumn air of the night frost; they rustled in the dark like silken gowns that we sometimes fancy are moving about us when we are in old houses, where all the owners have been dead years ago, and where they tell us ghosts and such like things re-visit the parlors, and passages, and stair-cases, and bed-rooms, and wander in stiffened brocades and rustling silks, whenever a stranger happens to be in their old abodes.

I had been told by the lawyer in whose hands the property was left for management and sale, that I would find an old negro man and his wife at the IIut, and that they would give me accommodations for the night, or for as long as I should think proper to remain in my examination of the localities and the availabilities of the place.

Accordingly, I gave a hearty rap upon the door with my riding-whip, and awaited the result of my experiment. Away went the echo, all around the place, over the river, among the trees, through the building, and finally it seemed to arouse just such another rap, given a hundred years ago, off toward the end of the house. I turned in the direction of the abrupt reiteration, and for the first time, I caught a glimpse of a mysterious, dim, quaint form that stood bolt upright from the earth and darkened against the sky. It was the tower, this famous, grand, and noble tower of mine.

I struck upon the door a second time, and again the opposite shore told to every tree upon its banks that some body was knocking upon the door at the other side, and again the tower, like a church-steeple, tolled its airy bell, and halloed to the night that I had come.

Another blackness than the night heard my rap this time, for soon afterward I heard steps within, and then the door was unbolted, and, with a candle in his hand, the negro occupant stood staring at me. He was an old man, and though he had seen many winters, as the Indians say, that did not prevent his having some curiosity at the sight so unexpectedly of a gentleman of my distinguished style of beauty, standing before him, with a riding-whip raised in the air, as if about to strike, for I had intended to rap again, had my last rap failed.

With proper respect to the venerable guardian of what, in all probability, was to be my future home, I made my business known, and