day Anne and Jane officiated as bridesmaids to their happy sister, and Polly Jones, not the least delighted of the party, gained a new gown and white ribbon from the bridegroom.

THE POSTMAN'S KNOCK.

BY MISS POWER.

"He comes

Yet careless what he brings; his one concern
Is to conduct it to the destined inn;
And, having dropped the expected bag, pass on,
To him indifferent whether grief or joy."

COWPER.

THE postman's knock! who is there that can near that seemingly insignificant sound without at least a sensation of curiosity, a vague feeling of expectation, if not a thrill of hope or fear? Disappointment generally succeeds; either the letter is for some one else in the house, or it is a commonplace note from a commonplace acquaintance, or perhaps it is a bill; and we fling it aside, feeling a little impatient with ourselves for imagining it could be anything interesting. This is the general effect of the postman's visit; but perhaps the letter arrives, and there is something in the seal or in the handwriting of the address, or there may be certain mystical ciphers in the the shape of initials at the corner, that make us tear open the missive with an eager hand and a

beating heart; and first devour, then quietly reaa the contents, which call forth smiles of delight, or tears, either of grief or rapture. Little recks the postman, as he trudges on through rain and sunshine, what a load of joy and woe, and love, and hatred, and indifference, and deceit, he bears about him every day; at one door he drops the intelligence of another human being having entered this world of woe, as it is the approved custom to call it; at the next, he leaves the information of one having quitted it; but to him it is all the same; he pursues "his beat," alike unconscious and regardless of the burst of delight or the wild outbreak of uncontrollable grief, that immediately succeeds his departure; and thus he goes on, day after day, the unwitting messenger of happiness or misery to thousands.

in

At the window of a large and handsome house Square, sat a young girl apparently employed in needle work: we say apparently, because, had you watched her for even a few minutes, you might have seen that the little white hand ever and anon paused in the middle of a stitch, and the large soft eyes turned from the embroidery frame to the square below, as though her thoughts were far otherwise occupied than in the shading of a rose or the streaking of a tulip. This girl seemed to be about eighteen; she was not what could be strictly called beautiful; had

you examined each feature separately, you would have discovered that the nose was almost verging upon the retroussé, and the mouth not so small as the strict line of beauty prescribed; yet, who ever thought that such was the case, as they watched the rosy lips breaking into a smile of unutterable sweetness, and displaying a row of teeth white and dazzling as new-fallen snow; her eyes were magnificent, large and soft, of the deepest violet, fringed with lashes below and above, black as night, and so long, that as she looked up or down they alternately touched the dark and exquisitely penciled brow, or swept the fair cheek below; her complexion was delicate to a degree, the loveliest pale pink and white, with the blue veins wandering beneath in beautiful distinctness, and her dark hair increasing the purity of the coloring; she was rather petite, with a slight, flexible, gracefully rounded figure; and hands and feet of fairy dimensions and faultless proportions. Altogether, Mary Lawrence was a most winning creature, and if any one were stoic enough to resist the witchery of her face, her low silvery voice, her sweet, child-like laugh, and her half arch, half innocent manner, brought the rebel to her feet at once. She was alone in the spacious and handsomely furnished drawing room, for her mother had gone out to drive and her brother to ride; and though she

liked both driving and riding in general, strange to say, she seemed to have taken a distaste to both on this particular day, and preferred sitting at home and occupying herself with what old maids and boarding-school misses call “a piece of work," namely, a square of canvas, on which it is the employment of the said old maids and boarding-school misses to embroider very large red roses, white lilies, striped with grey, (shaded I should say,) and various other flowers, that no botanist, from Linnæus to those of the present day, ever described; which clearly proves that the fair embroiderers have advanced much farther in their discoveries than the said botanists. Mary Lawrence did not belong to either of those classes of society we have mentioned, and she only applied herself to this task, so peculiarly appropriated to them, because her mind was very fully occupied just at that time, and she wished not to let her fingers remain in total idleness.

And yet the "piece of work" advanced very slowly indeed, and there were many strange mistakes in the coloring of it; here the petal of one of the red roses infringed terribly upon a grey and white lily, while the lily, being in consequence pressed for room, extended one of its blossoms over half the space alloted to a tulip; and yet Mary worked on, happily unconscious