Around The Tea-Table

ld and Mr. Givemfits, arrived. As already intimated, they were opposite in temperament-the former mild, mellow, fat, good-natured and of fine digestion, always seeing t

that in such atmosphere it was impossible to keep clear of colds. He thought he would go South. He would rather not live at all than live in such a climate as this. No chance here, save for doctors and undertakers, and even they have to take their own medicines and lie in their own coffins. At this Dr. Butterfield gave a good-natured laugh, and said, "I admit the inconveniences of the weather; but are you not aware that there

kens stepped in from Gad's Hill; and Henry W. Longfellow, without knocking, entered the sitting-room, his hair white as if he had walked through the snow with his hat off; and William H. Prescott, with his eyesight restored, happened in from Mexico, a cactus in his buttonhole; and Audubon set a cage of birds on the table-Baltimore oriole, chaffinch, starling and bobolink doing their prettiest; and Christopher North thumped his gun down on the hall floor, and hung his 'sporting jacket' on the hat-rack, and shook the carpet brown with Highland heather. As Walter Scott came in his dog scampered in after him, and put both paws up on the marble-top table; and Minnie asked the old man why he did not part his hair better, instead of letting it hang all over his forehead, and he apologized for it by the fact that he had been on a long tramp from Melrose Abbey to Kenilworth Castle. But I think as thrilling an evenin

in public; but when they are home, they never have their collar on straight, and in the morning look like a whirlwind breakfasting on a haystack. As for me, I am practical, and winter is winter, and sleet is sleet, and ice is ice, and a tea-cup is a tea-cup; an

was quiet. I knew not how to get conversation started again. Our usual way

the exclamation, "Dr. Butterfield, the physical and moral world is degenerating. Things get worse and worse. Look, for instance, at the tone of many of the newspapers; gossip, abuse, lies, blackmail, make up the chief par

terfield. "Don't you