Sometimes I mix in politics, at least to some extent, A merry Christmas to you all, this eighteen eighty-nine!” ears, Puts by the curious phonograph for another hundred years; And so the visions of my dream may not be overdone, About that merry Christmas day, a hundred years to come. RIGHT LIVING. Deeper than all sense of seeing Life is more than what man fancies, But it steadily advances Up the rugged heights of time, Hath a meaning most sublime. More of practice, less profession, In the church and in the state; When true hearts, divinely gifted, Shall the world most clearly see Calls on men to do and be. But forever and forever PETER ADAIR.-ROBERT OVERTON.* Peter Adair was a native of Slushington-in-the-Mud, but had left the village when a boy to go to sea. He had served his Queen well and faithfully for many years, and had acquired the dignity of a petty officer, being pensioned off while still a few years short of fifty. He had come back to live and die in his native place, and had bought the very house in which he was born, a little way out of the village, had furnished it comfortably throughout and had erected a huge flagstaff in the garden. that he might study the wind (to what purpose nobody knew). Peter Adair was well-off, for besides his pension he had a snug little annuity, and having nothing to trouble him ("no wife," as Stodge feelingly observed), what wonder he was one of the happiest men in the place? One night he and his friends had something of unusual interest to discuss. The "clargyman" had opened a new school in connection with the church, and had pensioned off widow Canem, the keeper of the "Dame's School," and had engaged a schoolmistress from unknown parts, who was shortly to make her appearance and begin her duties. *Author of "The Three Parsons," "Me and Bill," "Juberlo Tom," and other character sketches, in previous Numbers of this Series. "I do hear," said Peter Adair, slowly, emphasizing his remarks by a few slow and stately puffs from his pipe, "that she be wonderful clever, and knows reading and writing and grammar a'most as well as parson himself." "Readin' and writin' and grammarin'!" said Dobbs, contemptuously; "why I have heard as 'ow she do talk the lingovay Fransay!" 66 When is she coming?" asked Pills. "The parson he be a-goin' to send the carriage over to the railway station, I do hear, to-morrow, and long afore this time to-morrow she'll be here surelie. Maybe we shall see'un go by." Sure enough the next evening the vicar's carriage drove through the village, conveying Miss Mabel Brown, the new schoolmistress. Not a sour-visaged elderly woman, as some had fancied her; not a stern, hard-featured "blue-stocking" was Mabel Brown, but a fair girl of barely twenty, with smiling lips and blue eyes and golden hair. From the porch of the "Oak Apple," all our friends of the previous evening saw her, and that night nothing was spoken of but the new schoolmistress, whose appearance had so much surprised them. But it was noticed afterwards that Peter said little, and left early. Before "turning in," as he expressed it, Peter sat thoughtfullyin the arbor in his garden for a long time: and that night he dreamt of a woman with smiling lips and blue eyes and golden hair. Miss Brown settled at once to her new duties, and under her care the village children looked like turning out regular “prodigals," as the villagers put it. The youngest hope of the Dobbs family, an urchin of five, made such rapid progress with the alphabet that before many days he could repeat it backwards,-an accomplishment which he injudiciously displayed before the shopboy, upon which the latter had a fit with great promptitude. Firkins' children, Pills' children, and in fact nearly all the youngsters in the place got on wonderfully, and Miss Brown stood high in everybody's favor. Her praises were frequently sounded in the select circle of the "Oak Apple," but Peter Adair, on such occasions, seemed uneasy, and was silent. Peter used to meet the children oftener than ever now as they came out of school, and soon it became quite a practice for him to step inside the school room if he happened to be too early, and there to wait till the signal was given for breaking up. One day he appeared with an immense bouquet of flowers, just about sufficient to adorn a Cathedral on a festival, and with his honest face intensely rel, looking also intensely uneasy. As soon as the children dispersed, he approached the teacher, and presented her with the bouquet; and as her little hands touched his there came into Peter's great face a look at which some would have laughed and others wept for very pity. It is very easy to laugh at an old man's love for a girl, and we are all apt, I fear me, to regard such love as a legitimate butt for our derision and sarcasm; but has it ever struck you that there is sometimes something very touching in such a love as Peter Adair, the man of fifty, had conceived for this woman of scarcely more than twenty? Do you not know that sometimes a heart such as Peter's, beating in a bosom older than his, can bestow a love which passes most understandings to comprehend, a love that is fervent and lasting and pure,-do you not know that sometimes, after the meridian of life has long been passed, a passionate desire enters the heart for an object to love and cherish through life's declining years? God knows how true, aye, and even unselfish, thy love, poor honest Peter, for this woman with the smiling lips and blue eyes and golden hair! After a time, Peter was sometimes missing of an evening from the worthy coterie at the village inn, and at first his friends could not make out where he got to, or understand his uneasiness on being questioned; but one night Stodge (who was much pitied from the fact that he was dreadfully henpecked and stood in mortal dread of Mrs. Stodge) burst in upon them with pallid face, and stammered: "God help poor owd Peter! God save him! He's a-courtin' schoolmistress; he's a-courtin' schoolmistress I tell 'ee; oh, Lord!" In his acute sympathy with his friend, Stodge urgently pressed that the vicar should be entreated to offer on the following Sunday a special prayer for one in deadly peril; but in this he was overruled. The fact was, Stodge had seen Peter that evening enter, in full uniform, the little cottage where Miss Brown lived, near the vicarage, and had seen at once that the old sailor was driving fast on to the rock of matrimony. There was to be a tea and entertainment one night in the schoolroom (these entertainments being an innovation introduced by Miss Brown), and the children were dismissed early that the room might be prepared: and Peter went to help Miss Brown. They were imprudently left alone together, and suddenly, without a moment's warning, Peter fell on his knees at Mabel's feet, his buttons flying off in all directions, owing to the suddenness of the flop he made. Taking hold very tightly, but very tremblingly, of Mabel's hand, he told her-in very simple and manly words, when his agitation had somewhat subsided-that he loved her very dearly and very truly, and asked her if she would come to him, and make him a prouder and a happier and a better man than he had ever been before. Mabel looked thoughtfully away. It was weary work teaching these children day after day, week after week, month after month with the knowledge that it would in all probability be year after year: and this man at her feet, waiting so eagerly, with the tears in his eyes, for her answer, offered her what she had never had before, a comfortable home of her own where she might be forever free from the anxieties of daily toil. She hesitated awhile, and then she said something which filled Peter's heart with joy, and he sprang to his feet, heedless of another shower of failing buttons, and folded her tenderly in his great strong arms. Mabel was present at the tea and entertainment, but |