JACK HOPKINS' STORY.-CHARLES DICKENS.

"Does Mr. Sawyer live here?" said Mr. Pickwick, when the door was opened.

"Yes," said the girl, "first floor. It's the door straight afore you, when you gets to the top of the stairs." Having given this instruction, the handmaid disappeared with the candle in her hand, down the kitchen stairs, perfectly satisfied that she had done everything that could possibly be required of her under the circumstan

ces.

Mr. Snodgrass, who entered last, secured the street door, after several ineffectual efforts, by putting up the chain; and the friends stumbled up stairs, where they were received by Mr. Bob Sawyer. "How are you?" said the student, "Glad to see you,-take care of the glasses.” This caution was addressed to Mr. Pickwick, who had put his hat in the tray.

"Dear me," said Mr. Pickwick, "I beg your pardon." "Don't mention it, don't mention it," said Bob Sawyer. "I'm rather confined for room here, but you must put up with all that, when you come to see a young bachelor. Walk in. You've seen this gentleman before, I think?" Mr. Pickwick shook hands with Mr. Benjamin Allen, and his friends followed his example. They had scarcely taken their seats when there was another double knock. "I hope that's Jack Hopkins!" said Mr. Bob Sawyer. "Hush. Yes, it is. Come up, Jack; come up."

A heavy footstep was heard upon the stairs, and Jack Hopkins presented himself. He wore a black velvet waistcoat, with thunder-and-lightning buttons; and a blue striped shirt, with a white false collar.

"You're late, Jack?" said Mr. Benjamin Allen. "Been detained at Bartholomew's," replied Hopkins. "Anything new?"

"No, nothing particular. Rather a good accident brought into the casualty ward."

"What was that, sir?" inquired Mr. Pickwick. "Only a man fallen out of a four-pair of stairs' window; but it's a very fair case-very fair case indeed."

"Do you mean that the patient is in a fair way to recover?" inquired Mr. Pickwick.

"No," replied Hopkins, carelessly. "No, I should rather say he wouldn't. There must be a splendid operation though to-morrow-magnificent sight if Slasher does it."

"You consider Mr. Slasher a good operator?" said Mr. Pickwick.

"Best alive," replied Hopkins. "Took a boy's leg out. of the socket last week-boy ate five apples and a gingerbread cake exactly two minutes after it was all over, boy said he wouldn't lie there to be made game of; and he'd tell his mother if they didn't begin."

"Dear me!" said Mr. Pickwick, astonished.

"Pooh! that's nothing, that ain't," said Jack Hopkins, "Is it Bob?"

"Nothing at all,” replied Mr. Bob Sawyer.

"By-the-bye, Bob," said Hopkins, with a scarcely perceptible glance at Mr. Pickwick's attentive face, "we had a curious accident last night. A child was brought in who had swallowed a necklace."

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"Swallowed what, sir?" interrupted Mr. Pickwick. 'A necklace," replied Jack Hopkins. "Not all at once, you know, that would be too much you couldn't swallow that, if the child did-eh, Mr. Pickwick, ha! ha!" Mr. Hopkins appeared highly gratified with his own pleasantry; and continued-"No, the way was this; -child's parents were poor people who lived in a court. Child's eldest sister bought a necklace,-common necklace, made of large black wooden beads. Child being fond of toys, cribbed the necklace, hid it, played with it, cut the string, and swallowed a bead. Child thought it capital fun, went back next day, and swallowed another bead."

"Bless my heart," said Mr. Pickwick, "what a dreadful thing! I beg your pardon, sir. Go on."

"Next day, child swallowed two beads; the day after that, he treated himself to three, and so on, till in a week's time, he had got through the necklace-five-andtwenty beads in all. The sister, who was an industrious girl, and seldom treated herself to a bit of finery, cried her eyes out, at the loss of the necklace; looked high and low for it; but I needn't say, didn't find it. A few days afterwards, the family were at dinner-baked shoulder of mutton, and potatoes under it--the child, who wasn't hungry, was playing about the room, when suddenly there was heard a noise like a small hail-storm. 'Don't do that, my boy,' said the father. I ain't a doin' nothing,' said the child. 'Well, don't do it again,' said the father. There was a short silence, and then the noise began again, worse than ever. 'If you don't mind what I say, my boy,' said the father, 'you'll find yourself in bed, in something less than a pig's whisper.' He gave the child a shake to make him obedient, and such rattling ensued as nobody ever heard before. Why, it's in the child!' said the father, he's got the croup in the wrong place!' 'No, I haven't, father,' said the child. beginning to cry, it's the necklace; I swallowed it, father.' The father caught the child up, and ran with him to the hospital: the beads in the boy's stomach rattling all the way with the jolting; and the people looking up in the air, and down in the cellars, to see where the unusual sound came from. He's in the hospital now, and he makes so much noise when he walks about, that they're obliged to muffle him in a watchman's coat, for fear he should wake the patients."

"That's the most extraordinary case I ever heard of,” said Mr. Pickwick, with an emphatic blow on the table. Very singular things occur in our profession, I can assure you, sir," said Jack Hopkins.

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"So I should imagine," replied Mr. Pickwick.

THE YEAR'S TWELVE CHILDREN.

JANUARY, wan and gray,

Like an old pilgrim by the way,

Watches the snow, and shivering sighs
As the wild curlew round him flies,
Or, huddled underneath a thorn,
Sits praying for the lingering morn.

FEBRUARY, bluff and cold,

O'er furrows striding scorns the cold,
And with his horses two abreast
Makes the keen plough do his behest.

Rough MARCH comes blustering down the road,
In his wrathy hand the oxen goad;
Or, with a rough and angry haste,
Scatters the seeds o'er the dark waste.

APRIL, a child, half tears, half smiles,
Trips full of little playful wiles;
And laughing, 'neath her rainbow hood,
Seeks the wild violets in the wood.

MAY, the bright maiden, singing goes,
To where the snowy hawthorn blows,
Watching the lambs leap in the dells,
List'ning the simple village bells.

JUNE, with the mower's scarlet face,
Moves o'er the clover field apace,
And fast his crescent scythe sweeps on
O'er spots from whence the lark has flown.

JULY, the farmer, happy fellow,

Laughs to see the corn grow yellow;

The heavy grain he tosses up

From his right hand as from a cup.

AUGUST, the reaper, cleaves his way,
Through golden waves at break of day;
Or in his wagon, piled with corn,
At sunset home is proudly borne.
SEPTEMBER, with his baying hound,
Leaps fence and pale at every bound,
And casts into the wind in scorn,
All cares and dangers from his horn.

OCTOBER Comes, a woodman old,

Fenced with tough leather from the cold;
Round swings his sturdy axe, and lo!
A fir branch falls at every blow.

NOVEMBER COwers before the flame,
Blear crone, forgetting her own name!
Watching the blue smoke curling rise,
And broods upon old memories.

DECEMBER, fat and rosy, strides,

His old heart warm, well clothed his sides;
With kindly word for young and old,
The cheerier for the bracing cold,
Laughing a welcome, open flings
His doors, and as he goes he sings.

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.—N. M. BASKETT, M. D.

The story of Orpheus and Eurydice is related by the Latin poets Virgil ad Ovid.

Orpheus, a musician and poet of Grecian mythology, possessed the divine gift of moving animate and inanimate objects by the power of his song. Crazed by the loss of Eurydice he obtains permission to seek her in Pluto's realm, the God of the infernal regions, and brother of Jupiter and Saturn.

Here he witnesses the sufferings of the condemned. Sisyphus rolling a great stone up an endless height; Ixion bound to the wheel; Tantalus eternally cursed with hunger and thirst; the Furies; Cerberus, the great three-headed watchdog of hell; the Belides striving to carry water in leaky urns;-all types of the imaginary beings who suffer in the Grecian hell.

The result of Orpheus' mission is given in the following lines:

When gathering night

Shuts out the light

And hides the landscape from my sight,

Fond memory

Brings back to me

Legends of Greece and Italy.

I read once more

The stories o'er

That thrilled my heart in days of yore

Along my brain

They creep and chain

My mind, and thrill my heart again,—

That ancient time

Of love and crime,

When blood was hot as the summer's clime;