timent of loyalty, we may console ourselves, at least in part, by the reflection that a feeling and habit of hospitality is ennobling too, and perhaps proves no less in favor of the country than the other, especially since it often involves some sacrifice of time, inclination and worldly goods, while loyalty may, and often does evaporate in words. It is easier to swing one's hat and ejaculate, "God save the queen !" while we toss off a bumper, than to receive a poor family, furnish them with food and lodging, and speed them on their way. John Bull's loyalty has never made him look more sweetly upon the tax-gatherer, or embrace with fraternal warmth his Irish fellow-subjects; while our hospitality opens its doors to those whom taxes drive out of their homes, and to the Irish who flee before the tender mercies of their more favored countrymen. There is a vast deal of spurious but showy sentiment in the world.

But as a matter of individual and self-sacrificing virtue, commend us to the hospitality of the western settler. It extends not only to his neighbors and friends, those who may possibly have an opportunity of returning the kindness, but to business. visiters, tax-gatherers, duns! Every decent (white) man is asked to stay to dinner, whether he come to buy land or to serve a writ. This good nature often subjects the inviter to strange table-fellows, but your true Western man is not fastidious. He will see 'unwashen hands,' on his knives and forks rather than endure the thought of having transgressed the laws of hospitality.

This feeling is peculiarly exhibited in the urgency with which he invites his old parents to 'come out West,' forgetting the unavoidable dangers of the change. And it is no less remarkable how many, unappalled by the prospect

of leaving the home and the associations of youth, are finally induced by affection or compelled by poverty to join their prosperous children in their new abode. It will be long ere we forget the coming of two old people-the parents of our talkative neighbor, Mrs. Titmouse, whose log-house stood in a lonely spot, where the deer ran past the windows to be shot, and the fox took care of the chickens. Mrs. Titmouse was a perfect Croton in conversation. Her daily talk was like streams, jets, douches-everything but the standing pool or the useful hydrant which gives you just as much as you want.

"I want to speak to ye jist one minute," she would say, if she caught you passing her door. "Sit down now, do! here's a seat"-(wiping it with Sally Jane's sun-bonnet). "I've seen the day when I could ha' gi'n ye a cheer that hadn't a broken back. My old man's shiftless like, ever since he walked out of the third story door of the mill, and hit his head and spoilt that new cap o' his'n. That cap cost twelve shillin' if it cost a copper. He bought it down to Galpin's; or rather I bought it, as I may say, for I airnt the money by spinnin'. Spinnin' isn't sich very bad business, after all, for I airnt enough by my wheel last year to buy that 'ere cap, and them 'ere sashes, there in the corner. If my old man warn't quite so shiftless, we should ha' had something for winders besides cotton sheets, for them sashes has sarved for hen-roosts this six months. Its ra'ly astonishin' how hens does love to sleep where you don't want 'em to. They allers roosted on the teester of that bed till we got them sashes. I'd rather have 'em there than on the bed, though."

Thus much would be said while the chair was dusted and the

visiter placed in it. Then would the good dame seat herself upon the bed-side, and continue:

"Folks may think, seein' me so kind o' scant off, that I hain't never been used to nothin'; but I can tell ye my folks down east is forehanded folks. I've got a cousin that keeps as handsome a shoe-store as there is standin' between this and Detroit. And my uncle's daughter, Malindy Brown, is married to a cap'n of a vessel-his boat runs on Connecticut river-I dare say you may have heard of him-one Jabez Coffin. And my cousin, Joe Biuks, is a good farmer, with everything comfortable. When I was down east he gi'n me lots o' things. Look a here, now !"

And with the word, the speaker, in the vehemence of her desire to produce proofs of her gentility, would hop up on the block which served for a sort of stand by the side of the fire, and reach down a huge bag of dried apples, which must be "hefted" on the failing knees of the visiter, in proof of the forehandedness of the friends who could afford to give such evidence of their interest in Mrs. Titmouse. "Theyv'e got apples as plenty as taters," she would say, with a sigh, "and wool and flax too, for all I'm so poor. But I'm goin' to have my old father and mother come out here, to see how poor folks live, and I don't believe but what they'll be pleased to see the openin's too."

The old father and mother did come, and were duly installed in the "teestered" bed, while everything that the poor farm afforded was put in requisition for their comfort. Chinese exaggeration, "Every thing I have is yours," is literally acted upon in the woods in such cases. No reserve is thought of, from the best bed (though it be the only one) to the last fat chicken, if