And both are ruined?  No.  We will suppose the business-house is old and reputable:  the banks are obliging and creditors prudently liberal, and by and by the firm resumes its old career.  As for the colonel, the reader sees that to ruin him would be an absolute contradiction of nature.  His friends or relations give him assistance, or he sells his diamonds, and soon you meet him at the St. Charles, as blooming, sanguine and splendiferous as ever.  No, he cannot be ruined, but his is not an infrequent episode in the life of a Southern Planter.

WILL WALLACE HARNEY.

* * * * *

BABES IN THE WOOD.

    I had two little babes, a boy and girl—­
      Two little babes that are not with me now: 
    On one bright brow full golden fell the curl—­
      The curl fell chestnut-brown on one bright brow.

    I like to dream of them that some soft day,
      Whilst wandering from home, their fitful feet
    Went heedlessly through some still woodland way
      Where light and shade harmoniously meet;

    And that they wandered deeper and more deep
      Into the forest’s fragrant heart and fair,
    Till just at evenfall they dropped asleep,
      And ever since they have been resting there.

    After their willful wandering that day
      Each is so tired it does not wake at all,
    Whilst over them the boughs that sigh and sway
      Conspire to make perpetual evenfall.

    And I, that must not join them, still am blest,
      Passionately, though this poor heart grieves;
    For memories, like birds, at my behest,
      Have covered them with tender thoughts, like leaves.

EDGAR FAWCETT.

MY CHARGE ON THE LIFE-GUARDS.

Now that our little international troubles about consequential damages and the like are happily settled, and there is no danger that my revelations will augment them in any degree, I think I may venture to give the particulars of an affair of honor which I once had with a gigantic member of Her Britannic Majesty’s household troops.

My guardian had a special veneration for England in general and for Oxford in particular, and I was brought up and sent to Yale with the full understanding that St. Bridget’s, Oxon., was the place where I was to be “finished.”  I left Yale at the end of Junior year and crossed the ocean in the crack steamer of the then famous Collins line.  I do not believe any young American ever had a more favorable introduction to England than I had, and the wonder is that, considering the philo-Anglican atmosphere in which I was educated, I did not become a thorough-paced renegade.  I was, however, blessed with a tolerably independent spirit, and kept my nationality intact throughout my university course.