a lively sense of favours yet to be asked?` CHAPTER II.-MR. WADDLE MEDITATES GREAT THINGS. tempting morsel to descend again with alarming | moralists, constitutes the chief element in gratituderapidity. In a moment Mr. Waddle's face had changed expression; it was not now indicative of trouble, but of eager almost hungry-expectancy. The two ladies tried their best to seem unconcerned, and of a sudden to plunge into a most absorbing conversation, but the attempt, as most under similar circumstances, signally failed. For two or three minutes, which to them seemed an age, Mr. Waddle had been looking from his wife to his daughter, and from his daughter to his wife. At length he demanded, in a tone to which they had been little accustomed, "What is the meaning of all this, Ann? Why are my letters not brought in? "I thought," interposed Mrs. Waddle, meekly, "that you would like to have prayers first, David, as formerly, when you would not allow any business to come in till-' "Nonsense!" interrupted Mr. Waddle, angrily; then, seeing the colour mount, to his daughter's cheeks, he so far checked his rising mood as to resume more quietly, though none the less determinately, "Women understand nothing about business. There must be no meddling, Ann." Then, after a short pause-"Catherine, bring the letters." Now it should be noted that this was a mode of appellation in which "Pussy" had never heard herself addressed, except on one or two occasions within the last three weeks. No wonder, then, that the tears came to "Pussy's" eyes, though she strove hard to hide it, as she rose to obey her father's behest. Perhaps he had observed it; at any rate, he greeted her return with a kindly look and a "Thank you, dearie.” Kate had brought her father three legal-looking documents and a newspaper, all addressed in a large business hand to "David Waddle, Esq., Plum Cottage, Greenwood." But after "Pussy" had deposited these missives before her father, there remained yet another letter in her hand, which, as Mr. Waddle was engaged scanning his paper, she placed quietly, but blushing excessively, between her own teacup and her mother's, from which friendly shelter the latter lady as quietly removed it to her own pocket. Mr. Waddle did not waste much time over the legal-looking documents or the newspaper; a hasty examination seemed to satisfy him as to their contents. There was now an amount of cheerfulnesseven of alacrity-about his movements. He quickly brought a large bundle, apparently composed of similar materials, but all carefully docketed and annotated on the outside in Mr. Waddle's roundest handwriting. The new arrivals were fastened in the large strap which already held together the old friends in their very promiscuous company-though possibly it was not more promiscuous than that which in this world is so often brought together within the tight fastening of the social strap. Mr. Waddle laid the bundle carefully at his feet so as to be within shelter and convenient reach while he conducted prayers. As Mr. Waddle at the conclusion of prayers picked up his bundle, and left the breakfast-parlour for what he called his "snuggery," he gave his wife, in passing, a peculiarly friendly nod. Was Mr. David Waddle, then, heartily sorry for the hasty words he had so needlessly spoken, or did his sudden friendly mood contain much of what, according to certain IT was more than an hour after breakfast when a low tap at the door recalled Mr. Waddle from his calculations and reveries. He had been busy, very busy. Too busy to attend to anything else, his looks seemed to say, as Mrs. Waddle, in her attempt to make her way, threatened to step on some of the legallooking papers that littered the floor, or to sweep them in her train. "Have a care, Ann;" and Mr. Waddle, literally bending to the necessity, daintily picked them up, and made room for his wife on a chair, thereby displacing more of the documents. The table before him was similarly occupied, leaving just sufficient free space for a large sheet of paper which Mr. Waddle had covered with calculations, and for two restingplaces for his elbows, when, each reckoning completed, he had leant his head between his hands, intently contemplating the result. Every one knows how unpleasant a prosaic interruption is to the brain busy with inward visions— how, morally speaking, the shock of abruptly coming down to the everyday world must resemble the consequences of the sudden collapse of a balloon in midair. And should such shock come to one, though it were through the agency of one so near and dear as the wife of one's bosom, there is, be it said in Mr. David Waddle's interest and that of others, at least some excuse for more than usual sharpness of tono and voice. "I have been engaged all this morning," resumed Mr. Waddle, as soon as his wife was seated, and answering her looks, which wandered in sad astonishment over the array of spread-out documents—“I have been engaged comparing these investments, to ascertain two things-which of them would yield the highest dividend, and also what shares are likely so to rise in the market as to double or treble one's capital, when one would invest again in another enterprise, and so on. I can tell you, it costs no little thought to choose between them all!" and Mr. Waddle rubbed his forehead, as if he apprehended some permanent furrow had been left on it. "But David—” 66 Stay, stay; I know what you are going to object. That there is doubt or risk attaching to it? Just stop!" Mr. Waddle deftly picked from among the documents a paper, and quickly unfolded it. This is the current number of The Safe Guide to Wealth; or, the Perplexed Capitalist's Confidential Friend.' Only came this morning-couldn't have done without it!"-this by way of apology for the scene at breakfast, "There, listen: Since our last issue, those who have honoured us with their confidence will indeed have discovered that we are what we profess, "The Safe Guide to Wealth, and tho Perplexed Capitalist's Confidential Friend!" In our February number we ventured to recommend for IMMEDIATE purchase, "Great Wheal Bang Silver, Gold, and Sulphur Mine," in Paraguay, which runs in tho samo track as the celebrated l'an-fuddl-run-up, that last year yielded to its happy owners no less than 3168 per cent. on their capital!! The shares of the Great Wheal Bang have since risen from ton shillings paid up to £1, so that any one who a month ago had bought 4,000 shares might now have a snug little capital of £4,000 on which to make further 666 "Tut! never thought of such a thing." "Then what do you mean to speculate with, or to invest?" progress!'' Mr. David Waddle here smacked his | conscience-never very easy on the matter-began to lips expressively before he continued. They have prick and to smite him. since temporarily gone down to their original price. We say deliberately "temporarily!" Our emphatic advice is, Buy as fast as you can! We also recommended the newly-discovered Platina Mines in Patagonia, which are started under influential management. We are still of the same opinion. The only miserable objection we have heard against this mine of wealth and wealth of mine, is that, judging from past experience, the natives might eat up the miners sent out from this country. But surely it has not yet come to this, that British enterprise is to be checked by such difficulties! We believe in the progress of civilisation, and we expect that if this mine 18 Mr. Waddle paused to watch the effect of his reading. Discovering nothing but blank astonishment on the face of his wife, he continued, "Now don't think they give you only one side. See how they warn people against foolish risks-'On the other hand, we cautioned our friends against various schemes now afloat.' Now," demanded Mr. Waddle, "what say you to that, Ann? Would you not put implicit confidence in those people?" Thus recalled from the unknown regions of speculation to that on which her common sense enabled her to judge, Mrs. Waddle had no hesitation in replying. Lifting her truthful eyes to his flushed face, she said, slowly and distinctly, "I would have no confidence whatever in them, David." "No confidence in them after that!" and Mr. Waddle slapped the "Safe Guide to Wealth." "I understand nothing about business," continued Mrs. Waddle, not heeding the interruption; "but if it is so easy to get rich, and if these people know all about it, why don't they become rich themselves instead of sending out these circulars?" That was a puzzle! Mr. Waddle gave himself a hitch back on his chair, and scratched his pate for a solution. Yet, to do him justice, the same difficulty had more than once perplexed himself; but it would not have done to have given way on such a secondary point. "Graham tells me- "he commenced, "What! Peter Graham? What can he know?" Mr. Waddle was getting angry. "Graham does know; he has had great experience, and is doing an enormous business in stocks. He tells me it is not proper for agents to invest on their own account, and that explains it all. I am much obliged to Graham, for he clearly proved to me how every person ought to make three, if not four, dividends on his money every year." "I thought there were only two halves to each year?" "Of course; but this is the way. You get your dividend from one thing-say in January. Down goes the thing. Well, you wait till it comes up again; then you sell and buy another thing, which pays another dividend-say in April. That is two! Down goes the thing, up it comes again; you sell, you buy another thing for July-that is a third dividend! You do the same for October-that is a fourth! and so you have four dividends instead of two in the year, and our £300 a year would at once become £600. Eh! wouldn't you like that?" All unwittingly, poor Mrs. Waddle had just led up to the subject on which, of all others, Mr. Waddle most wished to speak to his wife, and which yet he most dreaded to approach. But the claims of truthfulness are paramount, and there are those who can discover even the leadings of Providence in any opportunity that offers for carrying out their own pet schemes. So Mr. Waddle put on the boldest yet kindliest face he could. "You know, my dear, there is your Uncle Nicoll's legacy of £2,000. They have kept us out of it as long as they could-the full year the law allowed them-but now it has been lying idle in the Greenwood Bank these three weeks Mr. Waddle paused for his wife's reply, but her utterance was checked. All that for the last few years had been the burden and sorrow of her heart fell upon it with cruel weight. When, thirty-five years before, she had begun, to use the country phrase, "to keep company "with David, she was a blooming lassie of twenty, and he a strapping hardworking lad of nearly the same age. Ann Nicoll (for such had been her maiden name) had been left an orphan, and was tolerated as the drudge, with hands or head, as occasion might require, in the house of a distant relative. David Waddle was foreman in the tannery, to which afterwards he succeeded. At that time, which was close upon the period when the two married, the income of the couple amounted to just £60 a year, with a dwelling attached to the tannery. Very improvident to marry on such a provision! So thought Ann Nicoll's distant connection-or, at least, very inconvenient. Accordingly a report had been sent to Ann's two uncles, who had just commenced business in London, sufficiently unfavourable to affect the much-hoped-for wedding-present. Would it be a dozen horse-hair chairs, or a sofa, or even a sideboard? It was neither one nor the other, but a long letter, in which the incipient broker brothers severally and jointly "washed their hands" with invisible moral soap of all the possible stains with which their niece's folly might have defiled them, and then withdrew their so-cleansed hands into the appropriate receptacle of their own pockets. But neither David nor Ann were more than temporarily disappointed or discouraged; they worked all the harder, and loved each other all the better, that they must be all in all to each other. No, not all in all, for the two had resolved, come what might, they would not neglect the soul's concerns. So they had on the day of their marriage reared their family altar, and kept on, through good report and through evil report, in joy and in sorrow, with God's light of love shining into their hearts and upon their path. He had given them several children and taken them away again; and they had joyed and wept, yet not without joying, when they laid their treasures in safe keeping. At last "Pussy" had been given, and remained to them to be the darling of their hearts, the centre of their aims and thoughts. Then, after many long years of hard toil, better times had come; David took up his former master's business and throve in it. Somehow the Uncles Nicoll must have heard of it; at any rate, ever afterwards there came on New Year's Day a Christmas card for Mrs. Waddle with "Andrew frittered and trifled and speculated away! But bitter as the disappointment was, it was not for the loss of the money to themselves and to "Pussy," nor for the sudden dissolving of her short-lived consolation, that she now mourned. The very prospect and planning of these speculations had brought the first jar of discord to their home; it had engrossed and absorbed her husband's mind and heart; it had unfitted him for everything else; it was literally like a worm, eating out the core of his heart's religion; it was becoming a passion, a mania. What would it be when he was once fairly plunged into the vortex, and helplessly whirled about in it? Better, far better, there never had been such legacy left them; better, far better, even labour than such rest. Assuredly, it is in this as in all other matters, that experience best confirms the truth of Scripture. Alike those who feel themselves poor and those who feel themselves rich will be the most ready to echo the inspired sentiment, "Give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me." Nicoll's best wishes." At last Andrew Nicoll him- | money was now, in Mrs. Waddle's opinion, to be self arrived one day-not directly at their house, but at the hotel in Greenwood, to spend the afternoon with them. He was very reserved and very still, but evidently well pleased with "Pussy," and, what Mrs. Waddle appreciated still more, he was respectful towards her husband. Poor Andrew Nicoll! With that presentiment which men sometimes have of their approaching end, he was visiting what few relatives were still left him, although he had neglected them during all his busy life. His next expedition was to the widow of a brother of his own, to whom the two London brokers had long made a scanty allowance, on which she had managed to bring up and educate her son James, now a youth about five years older than "Pussy." A close and most loving intercourse had been kept up between the widow and the Waddles, which led to frequent visits, and an intimacy between James and "Pussy," like that of brother and sister, dating from their childhood. A year more, and Andrew Nicoll was laid in his grave, and soon afterwards also the widow. When Andrew Nicoll's will was examined, it was found that while he bequeathed the bulk of his fortune to his brother and partner John, he had left a legacy of £2,000 to Mrs. Waddle, and another of £4000 to his nephew James, with which the latter now intended to commence on his own account in London a business to which he had been trained in his native town. Now it was this legacy to which Mr. Waddle had so bitterly referred, as kept from him to the utmost term the law would allow, and with which he intended to speculate; and Mrs. Waddle's deep feelings on the subject arose not from any inordinate attachment to or pride in the first money she had ever been able really to call her own, but from quite other causes. So long as the two had striven upwards in poverty and hard toil, no shadow of doubt or misgiving had ever rested on Mrs. Waddle's heart. It was otherwise when success began to attend their work. It was then, and increasingly as they advanced towards it, that Mrs. Waddle became alive to it, how desirable success was, and how rapidly any little help from without, like a favouring puff of wind in the sails of a ship, would carry one to the longed-for harbour. When she looked at Mr. Waddle, as he nightly returned weary and worn from his work, and still further at "Pussy," as she grew up so pretty and so promising, her heart sadly misgave her. Could it be that she was the obstructive to the prosperity of those whom most she loved? Like other noble-hearted women of the same calibre, her estimate of her husband was as extravagantly high as that of herself was depreciatory. There was scarcely a position to which, with his talents, energy, and perseverance, he might not have attained. Not that Mr. David Waddle had ever given his wife the faintest cause for suspecting that he had repented his early choice, or would make another if it were now open to him. But none the less, perhaps all the more keenly, did the good woman feel it. When that unexpected legacy at last came, Mrs. Waddle felt the burden in some measure lifted from her spirit. To add £100 a year to her husband's £300 was a relative position not unsuitable for a wife to occupy. And as for " Pussy,' a prospective dowry of £400 a year, not to speak of "the premises and walled garden," constituted a superadded worldly charm, in Mr. Waddle's forcible though figurative language, "not to be sneezed at!" This But Mr. Waddle, ignorant of what had been passing through his wife's mind, could not be expected to understand her silence. For a while he stared in her face, and then an ominous frown gathered on his brow. "Well, Ann, if you cannot trust me with your money-" he commenced, somewhat bitterly. "Trust you? I would gladly trust you with all I have or love on earth, and a thousand times more, if I had it; but—" Pro Mrs. Waddle could not finish her sentence. That she, who of all things in life had longed to be able to give something to her husband, should be suspected of unwillingness to entrust that paltry money to his keeping! The tears started to her eyes. Mrs. Waddle had never been addicted to scenes. bably her husband had not seen her weeping, except for joy, since they had stood side by side at the grave of their last buried child. Nor had the demon of— what shall we call it ?-not covetousness, but gambling and wealth-hunger, as yet so fastened upon the man as to hold him in permanent and absolute sway. Mr. David Waddle put his arm round his wife's neck, and pressed her to his heart. "There now, Ann, I didn't mean it. I am afraid I am a little hasty. I know you are the best and most loving of wives; and you and I trust each other just as much as we did when, thirty odd years ago, we began life together-don't we? And you and I love each other just as much as then-don't we?" What manner of answer Mrs. Waddle made to these interrogations it were highly unbecoming in the present writer to disclose. Suffice it to have put down one of the longest and strongest speeches Mr. Waddle was ever known to have made since the day of his marriage, and to add that sweetest music never fell with such grateful soothing on the ear as did her husband's words upon Mrs. Waddle's heart. And so there was once more a truce; and so Mrs. Waddle had given her consent to her husband's employing her £2,000 in speculation. Yet, after all, Mrs. Waddle had not even approached the subject on which she had originally come to speak. But it must be done, and the present seemed of all others the most propitious moment. "David!" Mr. Waddle looked up from the calculations to which he had returned with fresh zest. "James Nicoll is going to London. He must come through this; and, you know, he might ask Uncle John Nicoll's advice in London about your proposed investments." Poor Mrs. Waddle! She had used an artifice, and in her earnestness to attain her purpose even seemed to enter into her husband's schemes. But, as so often in similar circumstances, she was singularly unfortunate. What she had intended for an argument and a plea became a trap and a snare. Of all things, Mr. Waddle least desired that Mr. John Nicoll should become acquainted with his speculations. Curiously enough, though Mr. Waddle saw no harm, but the opposite, in his plans, yet he instinctively felt how justly and indignantly Uncle. Nicoll would denounce them. Besides, Graham had warned him by way of anticipation against the old school of brokers, who were not up to modern undertakings. Last, though by no means least, he did not want James Nicoll in the house; he did not wish the intimacy to continue; quite the opposite. He had now other plans, other views, other hopes and prospects for "Pussy." Was it not for her he was accumulating all that wealth-there on the paper? No, no! Mr. Waddle had been all that morning counting not only the eggs which lay for him in such speculative baskets as the Great Wheal Bang and the Patagonian mines, but the chickens which presumably were within these eggs; and not merely those chickens-no, not even when they had arrived at hen's estate-but the eggs which they in turn would lay, and the chickens that in turn would be hatched from them-and so on, till the concen trated cackling of that gigantic barnyard, and the proverbial difficulties of threading one's way through so many eggs, became far too great for ordinary powers of reasoning not to succumb to them. And so Mrs. Waddle understood it, that she must not even mention the letter which "Pussy" had at breakfast deposited between her own teacup and that of her mother. Sonnets of the Sacred Year. BY THE REV. S. J. STONE, M.A. ELEVENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY. "I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other."-St. Luke xviii. 14. "OGETHER, well: in prayer together, well: TOGE Well that they know and seek One LORD above: In utterance and in access! So they prove AMONG the posthumous poems of Cowper, there is one with the above title; which poem has many points of interest, both from the circumstances of its discovery by Hayley among his manuscripts (for it was never known he had written on the subject), the merits of the piece, and the high antiquity of the tree thus celebrated. "The copy that I had the delight of discovering," says Hayley, "is written on a loose half-quire of large quarto paper, with so many blotted lines and so many blank leaves that it might easily have been passed over as waste paper. I never saw any of his compositions more carefully or more judiciously corrected. It is impressed with all the marks of Cowper's most vigorous hand. It affords a striking exemplification of most of the excellences and defects of his peculiar style, and may be fairly quoted as an excellent specimen of his manner: "Thou wast a bauble once; a cup and ball Which babes might play with; and the thievish jay Thy rudiments should sleep the winter through. Time made thee what thou wast-king of the woods! And Time hath made thee what thou art, a cave For owls to roost in! Once thy spreading boughs O'erhung the champaign; and the numerous flock That grazed it, stood beneath that ample cope Uncrowded, yet safe sheltered from the storm. No flock frequents thee now; thou hast outlived This oak stood at Yardley Lodge, between two and three miles from Weston, just beyond Killick and Dinglederry, mentioned in Cowper's "Needless Alarm." The poet thus writes in 1788 to his friend Samuel Rose" Since your departure I have twice visited the oak, and with an intention to push my inquiries a mile beyond it, where, it seems, I should have found another oak, much larger and much more respectable than the former; but once I was hindered by the rain, and once by the sultriness of the day. This latter oak has been known by the name of Judith many ages, and is said to have been an oak at the time of the Conqueror." Many parts of England can boast of gigantic or venerable oaks. Those of Windsor Forest and of Sherwood Forest are well known. Mr. Staunton, in his notes to Shakespeare, says: "With regard to Herne's Oak, the fact is now established that a family of the name of Herne was living at Windsor in the sixteenth century, one Gylles Herne being married there in 1569. The old tradition was that Herne, one of the keepers in the park, having committed an offence, for which he feared to be disgraced, hung himself upon an oak, which was ever after haunted by his ghost. "The earliest notice of this oak, since immortalised by Shakespeare, is in a Plan of the Town and Castle of Windsor and Little Park,' published at Eton in 1742. In the map, a tree marked Sir John Falstaff's Oak,' is represented as being on the edge of a pit (Shakespeare's fairy pit!) just on the outside of an avenue which was formed in the seventeenth century, and known as Queen Elizabeth's Walk. The oak, a pollard, was described in 1780 as being twenty-seven feet in circumference, hollow, and the only tree in the neighbourhood into which the boys could get. Although in a rapid state of decay, acorns were obtained from it as late as 1783, and it would in all probability have stood the scath of time and shocks of weather, but that unfortunately it was marked down inadvertently in a list of decayed and unsightly trees which had been ordered to be destroyed by Gerge III, and fell a victim to the woodman's axe in 1796." Mr. Gilpin, in his "Forest Scenery," mentions some oaks "which chronicle on their furrowed trunks ages before the Conquest." An older and more classic author, Mr. Evelyn, in his "Sylva," records that an oak cut down near Newberry, in Berkshire, was of such astonishing magnitude that its trunk ran fifty feet clear without a knot, and cut clean timber five feet square at its base; its consort gave forty feet of clear straight timber, squaring four feet at its base, and nearly a yard square at its top. Dr. Hunter, in his edition of Evelyn's "Sylva," after describing a gigantic oak then in Sheffield Park, says: "Neither this nor any of the oaks mentioned by Mr. Evelyn, bears any proportion to one now growing at Cowthorpe, near Wetherley, in Yorkshire, the dimensions of which are almost incredible. Within three feet of the ground it measures sixteen yards, and close to the ground twenty-six yards. Its height in its present ruinous state (1776) is almost eighty-five feet, and its principal limb extends sixteen yards from the bole. Throughout the whole tree the foliage is extremely thin, so that the anatomy of the ancient branches may be distinctly seen in the height of summer. Compared to this, all other trees are but children of the forest." Dr. Hunter's description was good for the tree as it stood sixty years after-Stratton, near Norwich, an authority in such matters, wards, but its subsequent history and its present condition we do not know. In most parts of the country are ancient trees, famous in their localities. Gilbert White, in his ever fresh and charming "History of Selborne," celebrates the old oak of that classic village: "In the centre of the village, and near the church, is a square piece of ground, surrounded by houses, and vulgarly called the Plestor. In the midst of this spot stood, in olden times, a vast oak, with a short squat body, and huge horizontal arms, extending almost to the extremity of the area. This venerable trec, surrounded with stone steps, and seats above them, was the delight of old and young, and a place of some resort in summer evenings; where the former sat in grave debate, while the latter frolicked and danced before them. Long might it have stood, had not the amazing tempest in 1703 overturned it at once, to the infinite regret of the inhabitants and the vicar, who bestowed several pounds in setting it in its place again; but all his care could not avail, the tree sprouted for a time, then withered and died. This oak I mention to show to what a bulk planted oaks also may arrive; and planted this tree must certainly have been, as appears from what is known concerning the antiquities of the village." Through the split trunk of one of the oaks in Robin Hood's county the writer, some years ago, remembers to have ridden, with good clear roadway; and many wonderful trees were pointed out in the region of the Nottinghamshire "Dukeries." The Shire Oak, so named from its standing on a spot where the counties of Derby, Nottingham, and York join, is one of the largest in the kingdom, covering an area of seven hundred and seven square yards. The great oak in the Holt is also one of the very largest, measuring in circumference, at seven feet from the ground, thirtyfour feet. It was computed by Mr. Marsham, of to contain, at fourteen feet length, one thousand feet of timber. An oak is mentioned by Dr. Slott, in his History of Staffordshire, as standing at Rycote, in that county, which would overshadow with its boughs four thousand three hundred and seventy men. The circumference of one of the oaks at Ampthill Park, Bedfordshire, is upwards of forty feet at its base, and at its centre nearly thirty feet. It is hollow, and would admit four or five persons to stand upright within it. One branch equals some large trees in size. To this oak is affixed a plate with the following inscription: "Majestic tree, whose wrinkled form hath stood |