their work as made even the melancholy night rejoice, and brought a glow into its dark face as it hovered about the door and windows, peeping curiously in above the shoulders of a dozen or so loungers. As to this idle company, there they stood, spell-bound by the place, and, casting now and then a glance upon the darkness in their rear, settled their lazy elbows more at ease upon the sill, and leaned a little further in, no more disposed to tear themselves away than if they had been born to cluster round the blazing hearth like so many crickets. Out upon the angry wind! how from sighing, it began to bluster around the merry forge, banging at the wicket, and grumbling in the chimney, as if it bullied the jolly bellows for doing anything to order. And what an impotent swaggerer it was, too, for all its noise; for if it had any influence on that hoarse companion, it was but to make him roar his cheerful song the louder, and by consequence to make the fire burn the brighter, and the sparks to dance more gayly yet; at length, they whizzed so madly round and round that it was too much for a surly wind to bear; so off it flew with a howl; giving the old sign before the ale-house door such a cuff as it went, that the Blue Dragon was more rampant than usual ever afterwards, and indeed, before Christmas, reared clean out of its crazy frame. It was small tyranny for a respectable wind to go wreaking its vengeance on such poor creatures as the fallen leaves, but this wind happening to come up with a great heap of them just after venting its humor on the insulted Dragon, did so disperse and scatter them that they fled away, pell-mell, some here, some there, rolling over each other, whirling round and round upon their thin edges, taking frantic flights into the air, and playing all manner of extraordinary gambols, in the extremity of their distress. Nor was this enough for its malicious fury: for not content with driving them abroad, it charged small parties of them and hunted them into the wheelwright's saw-pit, and below the planks and timbers in the yard, and, scattering the sawdust in the air, it looked for them underneath, and when it did meet with any, whew! how it drove them on and followed at their heels! The scared leaves only flew the faster for all this, and a giddy chase it was; for they got into unfrequented places, where there was not an outlet, and where their pursuer kept them eddying round at his pleasure; and they crept under the eaves of houses and clung tightly to the sides of hay-ricks like bats; and tore in at open chamber windows and cowered close to hedges; and in short, went anywhere for safety. But the oddest feat they achieved was to take advantage of the sudden opening of Mr. Pecksniff's front door, to dash wildly into his passage; whither the wind, following close upon them, and finding the back door open, incontinently blew out the lighted candle held by Miss Pecksniff, and slammed the front door against Mr. Pecksniff, who was at that moment entering, with such violence that in the twinkling of an eye he lay on his back at the bottom of the steps. Being by this time weary of such trifling performances, the boisterous rover hurried away rejoicing, roaring over moor and meadow, hill and flat, until it got out to sea, where it met with other winds similarly disposed, and made a night of it. COMPOSITION. Write the fifth paragraph carefully. Look out of some window or door at home; select the nicest portion of the sky you notice, and tell what the clouds look like. A lake dotted with islands; towers capped with moss; animals with huge or small limbs; queer looking houses, perhaps; something just like what you may have seen in your holiday walks, or that father, mother, sister or brother may have told you about. Read "The Sky," by Ruskin, (page 276), and take something from it to help you to express your thoughts. Learn these subjoined lines by heart: Wiltshire The pale descending year, yet pleasing still, admonition trudged athwart scanty hoarding-place mantling ruddiness malicious emulation eddying melancholy incontinently battlement frantic boisterous RIP VAN WINKLE. Washington Irving, born in New York, 1783, died in 1860; historian, essayist and humorist, and next to Fenimore Cooper, America's most popular prose writer. The "History of Columbus," the "Life of Washington," the "Sketch-book," and "Knickerbocker," a highly humorous history of New York under the Dutch, are the most widely read of his works. His genial, kindly humor, that wins its way to the reader's heart, and his simple yet easy and elegant style, have won for him the title of the "Goldsmith of America." Though free from all striving after effect, his vocabulary is found to be of surprising extent and variety, and used with singular skill in descriptions of nature and character, in wit, and humor, and pathos, in trifling sketches as well as in dignified historical narrative. His works may be studied as models of English style. WI HOEVER has made a voyage up the Hudson must remember the Kaatskill mountains. They are a dismembered branch of the great Appalachian family, and are seen away to the West of the river, swelling up to a noble height, and lording it over the surrounding country. Every change of season, every change of weather, indeed every hour of the day, produces some change in the magical hues and shapes of these mountains, and they are regarded by all the good wives, far and near, as perfect barometers. When the weather is fair and settled, they are clothed in blue and purple, and print their bold outlines on the clear evening sky; but sometimes, when the rest of the landscape is cloudless, they gather a hood of gray vapors about their summits, which, in the last rays of the setting sun, will glow and light up like a crown of glory. At the foot of these fairy mountains the voyager may have discerned the light smoke curling up from a village, whose shingle roofs gleam among the trees, just where the blue tints of the upland melt away into the fresh green of the nearer landscape. It is a little village, of great antiquity, having been founded by some of the Dutch colonists in the early times of the province, just about the beginning of the government of the good Peter Stuyvesant, (may he rest in peace!) and there were some of the houses of the original settlers standing within a few years, built of small, yellow bricks brought from Holland, having latticed windows and gabled fronts, and surmounted with weathercocks. In that same village, and in one of these very houses (which, to tell the precise truth, was sadly time-worn and weather-beaten), there lived many years since, while the country was yet a province of Great Britain, a simple, good-natured fellow, of the name of Rip Van Winkle. He was a descendant of the Van Winkles who figured so gallantly in the chivalrous days of Peter Stuyvesant, and accompanied him to the siege of Fort Christina. He inherited, however, but little of the martial character of his ancestors. I have observed that he was a simple, good-natured man; he was, moreover, a kind neighbor, and an obedient hen-pecked husband. Indeed, to the latter circumstance might be owing that meekness of spirit which gained him such universal popularity; for those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home. Their tempers, doubtless, are rendered pliant and malleable in the fiery furnace of domestio tribulation, and a curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtues of patience and long-suffering. A termagant wife may, therefore, in some respects, be considered a tolerable blessing; and if so, Rip Van Winkle was thrice blessed. Certain it is, that he was a great favorite among all the good wives of the village, who, as usual with the amiable sex, took his part in all the family squabbles; and never failed, whenever they talked those matters over in their evening gossipings, to lay all the blame on Dame Van Winkle. The children of the village, too, would shout with joy whenever he approached. He assisted at their sports, made their playthings, taught them to fly kites and shoot marbles, and told them long stories of ghosts, witches and Indians. Whenever he went dodging about the village, a troop of them surrounded him, hanging on his skirts, clambering on his back, and playing a thousand tricks on him with impunity; and not a dog would bark at him throughout the neighborhood. The great error in Rip's composition was an insuperable aversion to all kinds of profitable labor. It could not be from the want of assiduity or perseverance; for he would sit on a wet rock, with a rod as long as a Tartar's lance, and fish all day without a murmur, even though he should not be encouraged by a single nibble. He would carry a fowling-piece on his shoulder for hours together, trudging through woods and swamps, and up |