To our wise lovers the sum now in their possession seemed inexhaustible. All difficulties seemed at an end, and they set out with all sails filled by this happy raising of the wind. "Tis, after all, a humiliating truth that

Lips, though blooming, must still be fed.

To wander over the woody hills all the morning with -the poet or the novelist whom the reader loves best; to watch the sailing clouds till the sultry noon is past, then linger by the shadowy lake till its bosom begins to purple with day's dying tints, while it fills the soul with dreamy happiness, only makes the unsympathizing body prodigiously hungry; and then to go home, wondering what on earth we can have for dinner, strikes me as a specimen of pungent bathos. But to return.

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Cora's desire to perform certain parts of the westward journey on foot, Everard himself bearing the two small valises which now enveloped all their earthly havings; some kinds of baseness are nobly undergone;"this wish had yielded to that feverish haste, that secret desire to fly from her own pursuing thoughts, to which I have before alluded. So they travelled like common people.

At Utica, Everard purchased a few books; for Cora had not been able to crowd into her travelling basket more than two mignon volumes of her darling Metastasio; and to live in a wilderness without books, was not to be thought of. Robinson Crusoe would have been the most rational purchase, but I dare say he did not buy that. Perhaps Atala, perhaps Gertrude of

Wyoming, perhaps but these are only conjectures. For my own part, I should have recommended Buchan's Domestic Medicine, the Frugal Housewife, the Whole Duty of Man, and the Almanac for 18-. But, counselled only by their own fantasies, these sober friends were, I doubt, omitted, in favour of some novels and poetry-books, idle gear at best.

With this reinforcement of " the stuff that dreams are made of," they proceeded; and, after some two or three days' travel, found themselves in a small village, in the south-western part of New-York. Here Cora was content to rest awhile; and Everard employed the time in sundry excursions for the purpose of recon. noitring the face of the country; wishing to ascertain whether it was rocky, and glenny, and streamy enough to suit Cora, whose soul disdained any thing like a level or a clearing.

Ere long he found a spot, so wild and mountainous and woody, as to be considered entirely impracticable by any common-sense settler; so that it seemed just the very place for a forest-home for a pair who had set out to live on other people's thoughts. Cora was so charmed with Everard's description of it, and whispered be it so tired of living at the

Hotel, that

she would not hear of going first to look and judge for herself, but insisted on removing at once, and finding a place to live in afterwards.

CHAPTER XL.

Love conceives

No paradise but such as Eden was,
With two hearts beating in it.

WILLIS.-Bianca Visconti, Act I. Sc. 1.

On the confines of this highland solitude stood a comfortable-looking farm-house, with only the usual complement of sheds and barns; but, on approaching near enough to peep within its belt of maples and elms, a splendid sign was revealed to the delighted eye of the weary traveller, promising "good entertainment for man and beast. Thus invited, Everard and Cora sought admission, and were received with a very civil nod from the portly host, who sat smoking his pipe by the window, "thinking of nothing at all;" at least so said his face, while his great dog lay just outside, ready to bark at customers.

The cognomen of this worthy transplanted Yankee, -the landlord, not the dog,-was, as the sign assured the world, Bildad Gridley; and the very tall, one-eyed ❝ottomy "who sat knitting by the other window, was addressed by him as "Miss Dart." Mr. Gridley, a widower, in the decline of life, and "Miss Dart," a poor widow, who, in return for a comfortable home, assisted his daughter Arethusa to do "the chores." There was yet another member of the family, Mr.

Gridley's son Ahasuerus, but he had not yet appeared. Miss Arethusa was a strapping damsel, in a “twoblues" calico, and a buff gingham cape, with a towering horn comb stuck on the very pinnacle of her head, and a string of gold beads encircling her ample neck.

The arrival of our city travellers, at this secluded public, produced at first quite a sensation. Few passengers, save the weary pedlar, or the spruce retailer of books, clocks, or nutmegs, found their way to these penetralia of Nature. Now and then, indeed, some wandering sportsman, or some college student picturesquing during his fall vacation, or perhaps a party of surveyors, rested for a night at the Moon and Seven Stars; but usually, although those much bedaubed luminaries had given place to "an exact likeness," as said Mr. Gridley, "of Giner'l Lay-Fyette," with his name, as was most meet, in yellow letters below the portrait, the house was as silent as if it had not borne the ambitious title of an inn, and the farming business went on with scarcely an occasional interruption.

But now the aspect of things was materially changed. Everard had signified his desire to remain in so beautiful a spot for a week or two at least, provided Mr. Gridley could board—himself "and-and-this lady," he added, for he could not call Cora his wife, though he tried.

The landlord, with a scrutinizing glance at poor Cora, said he rather guessed he could accommodate them for a spell; and then went to consult the other ́ powers. Our "happy pair," each tormented by an undefined sense of anxiety and conscious wrong, which neither was willing to acknowledge to the other,

come.

awaited the return of honest Bildad with a tremble. ment de cœur, which they in vain endeavoured to overAt length his jolly visage reappeared, and they were much relieved to hear him say in a more decided tone than before, "Well, sir! I guess we can 'commodate ye."

And here, how I might moralize upon the humbling effects of being naughty, which could make these proud young citizens, who had felt so wondrously well. satisfied with their own dignity and consequence only a week before, now await, with fearful apprehension, the fiat of a plain old farmer, who, after all, was only to board and lodge them. The old gentleman had such a fatherly look, that both Everard and Cora thought of their own papas; and now began to reflect that may be these papas might not after all see the joke in its true light. But neither of them said such a word, and so I shall pass the occasion in silence.

They were shown to a small white-washed room on the second floor, possessing one window, guiltless of the paint brush, now supported by means of that curious notched fixture called a button, so different from the article to which the title of right belongs. A bed adorned with a covering on which the taste of the weaver had expatiated, in the production of innumer. able squares and oblongs of blue and white; a very diminutive and exceedingly rickety table stained red; a looking-glass of some eight inches breadth, framed in a strip of gorgeous mahogany, and showing to the charmed gazer a visage curiously elongated cross-wise, with two nondescript chairs, and an old hair trunk, bearing the initials "B. G." described in brass nails on its