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where poor Flanders now lies in the cold grave. And," she added, with a despair that crushed every hope of getting her to leave and God knows, my dear boy, I don't care how soon the time comes for me to lie there. There is no hope of our ever being together on earth, and therefore the sooner I start on my journey to heaven the sooner will my misery from our separation and from slavery cease." ver

I could say nothing to these crushing words, so I fell on her shoulders and saturated her dress with my tears, edorsip • sloshtr

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In a little while her anxiety for me returned, and she began to entreat me to go back to my home in Columbus. I at last reluctantly consented to leave her; and bowed on my knees, with my head in her lap, I received her counsels, and a message of love for my sister. Before she had finished all she had to say, we heard footsteps at some distance from the cabin; but, as they continued to draw nearer, my mother said to me, "Perhaps that is Mrs. Terry. She has been to her mother's since Thursday, and Mr. Terry told me she ¦ might be home to-night. And if it is, she is coming to order me to cook some refreshments. She must not see you-so you just get in this clothes-press." And with these words my mother opened a rudelyconstructed clothes-press that fastened with a wooden button on the outside. I got in and she fastened the ¦ door..

ing so near it as to be struck when it flew open, and being off his guard for any such occurrence, he was staggered to the ground. At a glance, as I emerged, I saw him down; but seeing my mother lying on the floor, I forgot Terry in a moment, and rushed towards my mother. I bent over her, and found the blood streaming from a frightful gash in her forehead into her eye. I took her apron to wipe the blood away, and just as I did so I felt a terrible blow on my own head, and then another-but I felt no more, for I became unconscious.

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When I came to myself, about an hour afterwards, I found a coloured man keeping guard over me. My first request was for water, so excruciating was my thirst. The slave, while getting it, soundly abused me for running away and getting my mother into trouble, and for keeping him from visiting his wife on a neighbouring plantation, he having been put to guard me till the morning. The mention of my mother's name recalled the scene and events of the cabin, and I asked quickly where she was.

"She's in de smoke-house," was the answer; "and gittin' all dis 'buse about you. Master been whipping her dare for de last quarter uf hour-dare the lash goes now.":

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And listening, I heard that awful sound of the blows of a raw hide coming in contact with human flesh-a sound that was always horrible to me, but which now seemed as if every blow tore from my I had not been in a minute before I heard a heavy own heart pieces of quivering flesh. I cried aloud to footstep enter the cabin, and a heavy, gruff voice say, be untied; I besought the slave to let me up. But "Winnie, where is that boy of yours?? Of course the poor fellow was afraid to do it, and I was this astonished my mother, and for a moment she compelled to lie there and listen for the next ten was incapable of a reply. The question was repeated minutes-minutes that made ages of agony--to the two or three times, with a threat that Terry-for it sound of the lash and the loud outcries, and then the was he would knock her down if she did not an- wailing, and then the groaning, and at last the moanswer. My mother of course refused to betray me, ing of my mother. Remembering what had occurred and at last, losing all patience, he struck her a blow there that morning, the low moaning of my mother with the same heavy hickory stick which he had sounded like her dying farewell to me; and the used that morning upon poor Flanders, and which thought became so overpowering that for awhile I he always carried with him. When I heard the seemed to go mad, and raved so that another slave blow, forgetting that I was a boy and a slave, and came to the help of the guard. Let me be silent on that he was a strong man and a merciless slave-the time I spent from this till morning, and leave this holder, I burst the door of my hiding-place open by part of my narrative by simply stating that the time dashing with all my might against it. He was stand-embraced nearly four hours.

(To be continued.)

A BIRD IN THE HAND IS WORTH TWO IN THE BUSH.

Is the hand-fluttering fearfully,

Lonely and helpless-poor little thing!
In the bush-peeping out cheerfully,
Two together, gaily they sing.

Why is it best to have one in the hand?
Father, tell me,-I can't understand.
Best it is because you have hold of it;
Child, it is only a figure of speech!
Sunset shines, you look at the gold of it,

VIII-23

Knowing well it is out of your reach;

But the sixpence your godmother gave,
Yours it is, to spend or to save.

Ah, that sixpence! already I've done with it:
Never a penny with mo will stay.

If I could buy but an inch of the sun with it,
I might look at it every day.

Father, the birds shall stay in their nest!
Things that we never can have are best.

M. B. SMEDLEY.

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AT DOCTOR WARR'S.

"I HOPE there will be no objection, Michael Green." | Dublin University, he thought he could best employ "Oh no, sir, of course not-there's no objection; but I want to know if I may go to Aunt Campbell's this evening ?"

"I hope there will be no objection, Michael Green," Doctor Warr repeated, with marked emphasis.

his leisure for the benefit of others in teaching. And probably no one before or since ever conducted a school in the same manner. I am sure no one ever knew the ways of boys better. Our number was rigidly restricted to twelve boarders and six day scholars, that being as large a number as Doctor Warr thought he could personally superintend with efficiency. I waited two years before, a vacancy occurred, and it was thought even then a piece of good fortune to get into his school at Vizborough. In addition to his own instruction, we had a resident tutor and lecturer, and two professors came twice a week from Marbury College, besides drawing and music masters.

The first innovation I noticed on ordinary school practice was this, we had no school hours. There was so much work for each boy to do every week, and masters were always ready at specified times to hear lessons. It mattered nothing when they were done, so long as they were done. Certain classes and lectures had to be attended, but without any of the ordinary restraints of school hours. Each boy was thus placed on an independent footing, similar to that of a man at college. If a boy could get through his week's work in five days, so much the better for him if he liked holidays. These were not given us; they were earned; we bought them. For all our school business was regulated by a currency of paper, money, in which we were paid for everything we did. At the close of each day we made out a bill for work done, thus:

I could not make out what my new schoolmaster meant, and was going to question him farther, when one of the other boys came up and pulled me away, saying, "What a muff you are, an't you? Why he means you may go, of course." You see I was fresh to the school then, and didn't understand the Doctor's ways, or I should have known he was never accustomed to use stronger affirmatives or negatives than, "I hope so," "I trust not,"-"I hope there will be no objection;" "Yes" and "No" being weighty asseverations reserved by him for the most solemn occasions, when other men would employ an oath. This was the Doctor's reading of "Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay;" but as we never once in all our lives heard him employ those words, we used to fancy he read the passage, "Let your yea be 'I hope so,' and your nay 'I trust not." Indeed, it was a standing joke in the school that when Doctor Warr married Mrs. Warr, and was asked if he would take that lady to be his wedded wife, he had undoubtedly replied, with gravity, "I hope there is no objection." If you had met our schoolmaster in company you would probably have thought of him only as a quiet, mild, little man of about eight and thirty, whose dress you would remark as rather shabby. You might have also noticed the peculiar deference with which he would listen to the conversation of other people, seldom obtruding a remark of his own. He was one of the very few who are not content with admiring Carlyle's precept, "Speech is silvern, silence is golden," but act upon it. You would require to see a great deal of our Doctor before it would occur to you to recognise in such a gentle, quiet, unobtrusive man the deep thinker and the subtle philosopher which he was. It was a great treat to see him when a new boy described his attainments in Euclid, algebra, trigonometry, Greek, Latin, or Hebrew. Only an old boy could distinguish the odd twinkle in the Doctor's eye as he congratulated the new-comer on his knowledge, and trusted we should find it so. "It is my practice," he would say, "to begin at the beginning, and it will doubtless prove beneficial to you to refresh your memory with the first three rules of arithmetic and a little of the earlier portions of the Latin grammar." A simple sum in subtraction or pivision, or some odd question on the Latin declen-vate and waggon. A private holiday cost you ten sions, as Doctor Warr would put it, was always sufficient to floor the new boy. Our Doctor would never teach a pupil until he had made him feel exceedingly ignorant, which is only another word for teachable, and then he would begin with him at first principles. Doctor Warr kept school neither for profit nor fame. A wealthy man, and a wise one, an LL.D. of

DOCTOR WARR,

Dr. to MICHAEL GREEN,

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henge, Chantrey's birthplace at Heddington, Silbury Hill--we visited them all in this manner. We might go anywhere the horses would take us and our cap tain's will suggest, and then roam away over the Wiltshire Downs until, tired and glowing, we would n turn to the waggon to be taken home at night. We could earn a waggon holiday once in three weeks if we worked hard.

The prices paid for our work varied in accordance with each boy's abilities and proficiency. For instance, on commencing to read Virgil for the first time you would be paid at the rate of five shillings per hundred lines, while, as you proceeded, the price would be redaeed until when you got to the 9th book of the "Eneid" you would receive but one shilling and sixpence per hundred. If the Doctor found you disposed to neglect mathematics for classics, a little reduction in the prices paid you for Virgil and Homer, and some inducement in the increased scale of payment for Euclid, would probably equalise the receipts of revenue you derived from the consumption of those excisable articles for the current half year.

We paid our fines in the cardboard currency. Three pence for asking unnecessary questions when Doctor Warr had once replied to us, and five shillings for disobedience. In aggravated cases, when a boy's will was obstinately" on strike" against his master's, the latter fine was imposed at per minute until obedience was restored. In one instance I remember Richard Vox was fined twenty-two pounds for holding out for an hour and twenty-eight minutes in his persisteat refusal to do a problem over again which he had been all the morning doing wrong. When a boy got behind in his money like this he was kept indoors incessantly at work till the fine was earned. At such times he felt the restraints of school hours and school discipline in a way which those who paid their weekly thirty shillings never did. For him there would be no holidays no pleasant jaunts in the waggon-no play time, save an interval of a few minutes twice a day, when Doctor Warr would trot him round the playground for a little air. In Richard Vox's case the sum was one which it would have been utterly impossible to have made up in a whole term. He had ertainly applied himself very diligently to his work for three weeks after the fine was inflicted. Then the Doctor came to him and said

"Richard Vox, I am afraid you will never pay me the debt you owe.”

"I am afraid not, sir."

"Then, Richard Vox, hadn't you better do as other people do when they can't pay their debts ?" "What is that, sir?"

"See if your creditor won't take so much in the pound."

I believe Doctor Warr agreed in this case to acCept a compromise of fourteen pence in the pound, and the bankrupt was discharged.

Nobody ever saw the Doctor in a temper; his quiet equanimity was oftentimes very provoking, Lal would occasionally aggravate a boy to call him abusive names. "Hard names break no bones,"

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he would reply at such times, fixing his large, calm, brownish-grey eyes on the offender. "Go into the playground and pick me up two thousand leaves." This was a favourite punishment for a boy in a passion. I have seen a good many boys go into our playground to this task, mad with passion, abusing Doctor Warr and the school, and everything else in the world, but I never saw one come back with his quota of leaves in a bad temper. It is an old injunction, when you are angry count a hundred before you speak. Very annoying, no doubt, but an angry man is "not himself," as we say, and if you can only prevail on him to do some very monotonous work, like counting, for a short time, his mind will come to itself simply because it is let alone. And when a lad's mind comes to itself in a mechanical occupation of this kind, he begins to think what a fool he must have been that he required to be set scavenging leaves, and that it should be necessary to make him waste his time doing useless work with his hands, in order to keep his mind out of mischief, after the manner of those monkeys who work themselves up into such awful passions that they are obliged to have a bit of wood given them to bite, lest they tear themselves to picces in their rage. The lesson of the leaves was salutary. Few men are more ready at rejoinder than was our Doctor.

"Please, sir," said little Bob Miller one day, "Wickham is making faces at me."

"Don't look at him, Robert Miller," said Doctor Warr.

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'Please, Doctor Warr," cried Wickham presently, "Miller called me a beast."

"I hope it isn't true, George Wickham," was the reply.

"Doctor Warr," I inquired one day, "do you think it is wrong to go to theatres and to read novels ?" "Whatsoever is not of faith is sin,' Michael Green."

"Do you mean you don't think it is wrong?" I asked.

"Whatsoever is not of faith is sin,' Michael Green," he repeated, holding up three fingers, to inform me I had three pence to pay for asking a question which had already been answered. For the Doctor would never speak when a motion would do as wellnot from idleness, or to save himself trouble, but because he held that the reason why words are so lightly esteemed is that we speak too many of them for all sorts of unnecessary purposes.

"Arthur Lloyd, do you know what you are doing?" the Doctor would say to a fat lad who was often to be found neither at work nor play.

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George Wickham was very clever with the tennis ballot He could throw it at the chimneys on the other side of the street behind our gates, right from the far end of the playground, never failing to make it rebound into his hand again. Other boys attempting to do the same broke no end of shop windows in the street, until at last this "ball practice" was prohibited by strict order of the Doctor. Wickham, annoyed at being forbidden his favourite pastime, used at times to steal out in the playground when we were all in at study, and have a shot, just to keep his hand in. He very rarely did so, however, without hearing his name called from somewhere up in the sky, and looking up to the roofs of some of our school buildings, would be sure to see the ubiquitous Doctor - prowling about, cat-like, but with five fingers up, to remind him of the amount of the fine he had to pay for disobedience.

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[Good Words, May 1, 1867.

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heard that the punishment for that offence was of a sort calculated effectually to prevent its repetition. I had reason, however, before I left, to endorse the popular belief from personal experience. I am afraid it must have been dreadfully hypocritical of me to go on pretending it was my Aunt Campbell I was so anxious to see whenever I could get leave from school-for it was no such thing. I went to my aunt's house not to see her, but my cousin Fanny. Fanny and I were "engaged" in a regular boy and girl engagement. We used to write to each other at least twice a week, contriving to hand our notes clandestinely under the tea-table, when absorbed, to all outward appearance, / in the consumption of seed cake and the rapt contemplation of the gas-lights. We contrived to go for walks together, too, whereof much of the enjoyment depended on their secrecy, and the dread lest we should be found out, Ah me! they were happy walks, when we lived in the sunshine of the golden presentwalks that come up in my mind as pleasant memories now, though my wife, whose name is not Fanny, has the book-marker she gave me on my birthday! I must have dropped one of Fanny's little notes from my pocket in the playground, for I was startled to hear George Wickham come behind me reading Fanny's

He had his three shots, and the ball came back to words, and "making game" of them before the other his hand each time. % TF I

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Deprived of this pleasure, and having stopped in for a fortnight to work out his fine, the first use Wickham made of his regained liberty in the play ground was to ask the Doctor to go and stand at one end of it, and let him have a "shy" at his hat from the other. Doctor Warr stood still, saying, "If you, think it will do me any good you may."

Wickham threw the ball almost as cleverly as Tell shot his arrow, and knocked the Doctor's hat off, but in doing so the ball struck his head smartly, having caught the hat only just above the brim, and hurt Doctor Warr somewhat severely. The five fingers went up. J. I

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boys. In an instant I flew at him like a tiger, tore the note away, and struck him a blow in the face. He returned the blow directly, and in a minute we were fighting desperately, the boys cheering each of us in turn as some well-delivered stroke gave one or the other a momentary advantage. We were both closing for severe battle, I hot and wild with passion, when the Doctor walked quietly in between, and without laying so much as a finger on either of us, said, in his calm voice tool oft ved "Michael Green and George Wickham, I wish to speak with you in the school-room."

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He never looked back to see if we followed, but walked leisurely indoors. Doctor Warr was a man whom to hear was to obey. We instinctively fol lowed him, dumb, bleeding, and panting,

"I am very sorry to find, Michael Green and George Wickham," the Doctor began, opening his calm eyes very wide and fixing them on our flushed and burning faces, "that you have not yet learnt one of the first lessons most people learn in infancy--the use of your hands. You have both so obviously mistaken the purpose for which hands were given you, that I am afraid we must go back again to first principles. It is not my fault if I treat you like children, but yours that you won't act like men. Until you know what your hands are for I cannot certainly allow you to use them any more, lest you do more mischief. To prevent mistakes, till you know better, I am going to tie up your hands, Michael Green and George Wickham."

Thereupon the Doctor left the room, and presently returning with a piece of rope, gravely tied our hands behind us. He then added-"After what has oc curred, I cannot consider it safe to trust you at large with the other boys, lest you do them an injury.

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