This was the largest speech, probably, that the sandy-haired young man had ever made in his life. It was a regular "stunner," though. It convinced Miss Sumker, who had for a moment thought of withdrawing the light of her freckles from him forever, and who now hastened to replace her arm in his; and it convinced Captain Brown, who became suddenly as mild as moonbeams, shook his new acquaintance by the hand, and declared him a "fine young fellow."

But the drayman was disgusted at the affair ending without a fight, and expressed his feelings, as he laid the lash across his horse, by the single exclamation, "Pickles!" thereby insinuating that the nauseous sweetness of the reconciliation required a strong dash of acidity to neutralize its flavor.

The captain regained his strong-minded wife, and our sandy-haired friend went home with Miss Sumker, metamorphosed into Mrs. Brown, having "taken charge" of her for life.

THE NEW YEAR'S BELLS.

How the wind blew on the evening of the 31st December, in the year—but no matter for the date. It came roaring from the north, fraught with the icy chillness of those hyperborean regions that are lost to the sunlight for six months, the realm of ice-ribbed caverns, and snow mountains heaped up above the horizon in the cold and cheerless sky. On it came, that northern blast, howling and tearing, and menacing with destruction every obstacle that crossed its path. It dashed right through a gorge in the mountains, and twisted the arms of the rock-rooted hemlock and the giant oak, as if they were the twigs of saplings. Then it swept over the wild, waste meadows, rattling the frozen sedge, and whirling into eddies the few dry leaves that remained upon the surface of the earth. Next it invaded the principal street of the quaint old village, and played the mischief with the tall elms and the venerable buttonwoods that stood on either side like sentinels guarding the highway. How the old gilt lion that swung from the sign post of the tavern, hanging like a malefactor in irons, was shaken and disturbed! Backwards and forwards the animal was tossed, like a bark upon the ocean. Now he seemed as if about to turn a somerset and circumnavigate the beam from which he hung, creaking and groaning dismally all the while, like an unhappy soul in purgatory. The loose shutters of the upper story of the tavern chattered like the teeth of a witch-ridden old crone. But cheerful fires of hickory and maple were burning within doors; a merry group was gathered in the old oak parlor, and little recked the guests of the elemental war without. In fact, they knew nothing of it, till the driver of the village stage coach, making his appearance with a few flakes of snow on his snuff-colored surtout, announced, as he expanded his broad hands to the genial blaze, that it was a "wild night out of doors."

But on—on sped the wild wind, driving the snow flakes before it as a victorious army sweeps away the routed skirmishers and outposts of the enemy. Away went the night wind on its wild errand, reaching at last a solitary cottage on the outskirts of the village. Here it revelled in unwonted fury, ripping up the loose shingles from the moss-grown rooftree, and forcing an entrance through many a yawning crevice.

The scene within the cottage presented a strange and painful contrast to the interior of most of the comfortable houses in the flourishing village through which we have been hurrying on the wings of the cold north wind. The room was scantily furnished. There were two or three very old-fashioned, rickety, straw-bottomed chairs, an oaken stool or two, and a pine table. The hour hand of a wooden clock on the mantel piece pointed to eleven. A fire of chips and brushwood was smouldering on the hearth. In one corner of the room, near the fireplace, on a heap of straw, covered with a blanket, two little boys lay sleeping in each other's arms. Crouched near the table, her features dimly lighted by a tallow candle, sat a woman advanced in life, clad in faded but cleanly garments, whose hollow cheeks and sunken eye told a painful tale of sorrow and destitution. Those sad eyes were fixed anxiously and imploringly upon the stern, grim face of a hard-featured old man, who, with hat pulled over his shaggy gray eyebrows, was standing, resting on a stout staff, in the centre of the floor.

"So, you haven't got any money for me," said the old man, in the harshest of all possible voices.

"Alas! no, Mr. Wurm—if I had I should have brought it to you long ago," answered the poor woman. "I had raked and scraped a little together—but the sickness of these poor children—poor William's orphans—swept it all away—I haven't got a cent."

"So much the worse for you, Mrs. Redman," answered the old man, harshly. "I've been easy with you—I've waited and waited—trusting your promises. I can't wait any longer. I want the money."

"You want the money! Is it possible? Report speaks you rich."

"It's false—false!" said the old man, bitterly. "I'm poor—I'm pinched. Ask the townspeople how I live. Do I look like a rich man? No, no! I tell you I want my dues—and I will have 'em."

"I can't pay you," said the woman, sadly.

"Then you must abide the consequences!"

"What consequences?"

"I've got an execution—that's all," said the hardhearted landlord.

"An execution! what's that?"

"A warrant to take all your goods."

"My goods!" said the poor woman, looking round her with a melancholy smile. "Why I have nothing but what few things you see in this room. You surely wouldn't take those."

"I'll take all I can get."

"And leave me here with the bare walls."

"No, no! you walk out of this to-morrow."

"In the depth of winter! You cannot be so hardhearted."

"We shall see that."

"I care not for myself; but what is to become of these poor children?"

"Send 'em to work in the factory."

"But they are just recovering from sickness; they are too young to work. O, where, where can we go?"

"To the poorhouse," said the landlord, fiercely.

The poor woman rose, and approaching the landlord's feet, fell upon her knees, clasped her hands, and looked upward in his stern and unrelenting face.

"Israel Wurm," she said, "has your heart grown as hard as the nether millstone? Have you forgotten the days of old lang syne? O, remember that we were once prosperous and happy; remember that misfortune and not sin has reduced me and mine to the deplorable state in which you find us. Remember that my husband was your early friend—your schoolfellow—your playmate. Remember that when he was rich and you poor, he gave you from his plenty—freely—bountifully—not gave with the expectation of a return; his gifts were bounties, not loans."

"Therefore I owed him nothing," said the obdurate miser, turning away.

"You shall hear me out," said the woman, starting to her feet. "I ask for a further delay; I ask you to stay the hard hand of the law. You profess to be a Christian; I demand justice and mercy in the name of those sleeping innocents, my poor grandchildren, whose father is in heaven. You shall be merciful."

"Heyday!" exclaimed the miser; "this is fine talk, upon my word. You demand justice, do you? Well, you shall have it. The law is on my side, and I will carry it out to the letter."

"Then," said the outraged woman, stretching forth her trembling hand, "the curse of the widow and the orphan shall be upon you. Sleeping or waking, it shall haunt you; and on your miserable death bed, when the ugly shapes that throng about the pillow of the dying sinner shall close around you, our malediction shall weigh like lead upon you, and your palsied lips shall fail to articulate the impotent prayer for that mercy to yourself which you denied to others. And now begone. This house is mine to-night, at least. Afflict it no longer with your presence. Go forth into the night; it is not darker than your benighted soul, nor is the north wind one half so pitiless as you."

With a bitter curse upon his lips, but trembling and dismayed in spite of himself, Israel Wurm left the presence of the indignant victim of his cruelty, and turned his footsteps in the direction of his home. His home! It scarcely deserved the name. There was no fire there to thaw his chilled and trembling frame—no light to gleam athwart the darkness, and send forth its pilgrim rays to meet him and guide his footsteps to his threshold. No wife, no children, waited eagerly his return. It was the miser's home—dark, desolate, stern, and repulsive. Its deep cellars, its thick walls held hidden stores of gold, and notes, and bonds, but there were garnered up no treasures of the heart.

The miser's path lay through the churchyard, a desolate place enough even in the gay noon of a midsummer day, now doubly repulsive in the wild midnight of midwinter. The wall was ruinous. The black iron gateway frowned, naked and ominous. The field of death was crowded with headstones of slate, and innumerable mounds marked the resting-place of many generations. The snow was now gathering fast over the dreary and desolate abode, as the miser stumbled along the beaten pathway, bending against the blast and drift. A strange numbness and drowsiness crept over him. He no longer felt the cold; an uncontrollable desire of slumber possessed him. He sat down upon a flat tombstone, and soon lost all consciousness of his actual situation.

Suddenly he saw before him the well-known figure of the old sexton of the village, busily occupied in digging a grave. The winter had passed away; it was now midsummer. The birds were singing in the trees, and from the far green meadows sounded the low of cattle, and the tinkling of sheep bells. Even the graveyard looked no longer desolate, for on many of the little hillocks bright flowers were springing into bloom and verdure, attesting the affection that outlived death, and decorating with living bloom the precincts of decay.

"My friend, for whom are you digging that grave?" asked Israel.

The sexton looked up from his work, but did not seem to recognize the spokesman.

"For a man that died last night; he is to be buried to-day."

"Methinks this haste is somewhat indecorous," said Israel Wurm.

"O, for the matter of that," said the sexton, "the sooner this fellow's out of the way the better. There's nobody to mourn for him."

"Is he a pauper, then?"

"O no! he was immensely rich."

"And had he no relations—no friends?"

"For relations, he had a nephew, who inherits all his property. The young dog will make the money fly, I tell you. As for friends, he had none. The poor dreaded him—the good despised him; for he was a hardhearted, selfish, griping man. In a word, he was a miser," said the sexton.

"A miser," faltered the trembling dreamer; "what was his name?"

"Israel Wurm," replied the sexton.

Graveyard and sexton faded away; in their place arose a splendid grove of trees—a clearing—a village school house. Two boys were sauntering along the roadside, engaged in serious, childish talk. One was fair, with golden locks; the other dark-haired and grave of aspect. Israel started, for in the latter he recognized himself—a boy of fifty years ago.

"Israel," said the golden-haired boy, "it's 'lection day to-morrow; we'll hire Browning's horse and chaise, and go to Boston, and have a grand time on the Common, seeing all the shows."

"You forget, Mark," said the dark-haired boy, sadly, "that I have no money."

"What of that?" replied the other; "I have a pocket full; and what's mine is yours, you know. Come, cheer up, you'll one day he as rich as I am; and then it will be your turn to treat, you know. I can afford to be generous, and so would you be, if you had the means."

Then the shadow passed from the face of the dark-haired boy, and a smile lighted up his countenance, and the two schoolfellows passed on their way together.

Grove and school house passed away, melting into another scene like one of the dissolving views. Israel stood before a huge illuminated screen, in the midst of a gaping company of sight seers. He could see nothing but a confused mass of heads, vaguely lighted by the rays from that vast screen. It was some kind of an exhibition.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," said a strange voice issuing from the darkness, "we shall show you the wonders of the oxy-hydrogen microscope; natural objects magnified five thousand times. Look and behold the proboscis of the common house fly."

Israel gazed with the rest, and soon a huge object, resembling the trunk of a monster elephant, appeared on the illuminated disk. It passed away.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen," said the voice, "look well to the illuminated screen. What do you see now?"

"Nothing!" was the universal and indignant answer.

"I thought so," replied the voice. "Yet you have before you a miser's soul magnified five thousand times; a million such would not produce an image on the screen."

The illuminated disk grew dark and disappeared; then a lurid light seemed to fill all space; and soon huge billows of flames rolled upward, and writhed and twisted together like a myriad of gigantic serpents. Shrieks and howls of anguish issued from the fiery mass, but above all was heard the startling clangor of a bell.

"Halloo! who's this?" cried a voice that evidently issued from a set of powerful human lungs. The miser felt himself roughly shaken by the shoulder, and awoke.

"What's the noise?—fire?" he asked; for the bell he had heard in his dream now jarred upon his waking senses.

"Fire! no!" said the man who had awakened him—the butcher of the village. "It's the boys ringing in the new year. By the way, I wish you a happy new year, Mr. Wurm."

"A happy new year, Mr. Wurm," said the schoolmaster for he, too, was present.

"A happy new year," said Farmer Harrowby.

"And a happy new year" chorused a dozen other voices. It was great fun wishing a miser a happy new year.

"Thank you, neighbors; I wish you a thousand," replied Israel, cheerfully.

"How came you asleep there?" asked Farmer Harrowby. "Why, you might have perished in the drift."

"I was overcome by drowsiness," answered Israel. "I was very cold; I'd been to make a call on Widow Redman, and the poor soul was out of wood. By the way, farmer, the first thing after sunrise, I want you to be sure to gear up your ox team, and take a cord of your best hickory and pitch pine to the widow."

"And who'll pay me?" asked the farmer, doubtfully.

"I will, to be sure," answered Israel. "Have not I got money enough? Here—hold your hand;" and he put a handful of silver in the farmer's honest palm. "And you, Mr. Wilkins," he added, addressing the butcher, "take her the best turkey you've got, and half a pig, with my compliments, and a happy new year to her."

"And how about that execution?" asked the constable, who was round with the rest, 'seeing the old year out and the new year in.'

"Confound the execution! Don't let me hear another word about it," said Israel, magnanimously. "And now, neighbors," he added, "I owe you something for your good wishes; come along with me to the Golden Lion, and I'll give you the best supper the tavern affords. Hurrah! New year don't come but once in a twelvemonth."

We will be bound that a merrier party never left a churchyard, even after a funeral, nor a merrier set ever sat down to a festal board, than that which gathered to greet the hospitality of Israel Wurm. In the course of the evening, an old Scotch gardener gave it as his opinion that the "miser was fey." (When a man suddenly changes his character, as when a spendthrift becomes saving, or a niggard generous, the Scotch say that he is fey, and consider the change a forerunner of sudden death.)

"No, my friends," said Israel, overhearing the remark, "I am not fey; and I mean to live a long while, Heaven willing, for I have just learned that the true secret of enjoying life is to do good to others. I had a dream to-night which has, I trust, made me a wiser and better man. The miser lies buried in yonder churchyard; Israel Wurm, a new man, has risen in his place; and as far as my means go, I intend that this shall be a happy new year to every one of my acquaintances."

Israel was as good as his word, and never relapsed into his old habits. The widow and the orphan children were provided for by his bounty; he gave liberally to every object of charity. Hospitals, schools, and colleges were the recipients of his bounty; and when he died, in the fulness of years, the blessings of old and young followed him to his last resting-place in the old churchyard where he had dreamed the mysterious dream, and been awakened to a better life by the pealing of the New Year's Bells.

THE OLD YEAR AND THE NEW.

"Wrinkles and gray hairs are the work of sorrows, not of years. Eyes that are weary of the sight of suffering grow dim apace."

"But hark!" said the youth. "Hear you not that music—the peals of laughter that come from yonder illuminated house? It is a wedding festival."

"Yes," replied the old man, sadly. "A twelvemonth since, I heard the same sounds in the same house. There was music and feasting—it was, as now, a wedding festival. Where is the bride? Go to yonder churchyard. You will find her name inscribed on a simple stone. If you pass out of the city to the north, you will see some huge buildings of brick, towering upon an eminence. If you linger by the garden wall you will hear shrieks and curses, the howls of despair, the ravings of hopeless lunacy. The husband is there—the victim of his own evil passions—a raving maniac."

"Away with these croaking reminiscences!" cried the younger voice. "Let the music peal—let the dance go on. The wine is red within the cup."

"Yes—and the deadly serpent lurks below."

"Then the world is all desolate!" cried the New Year.

"No! there are green spots in the desert!" said the Old Year; "but beware of deeming it all fairyland! But a little while and you will follow me. But the end is not here—after Time, Eternity! There suffering and sin are unknown. There each departed spirit, after making the circuit of its appointed sphere, shall rise to a higher and a higher, while boundless love and wisdom illuminate all, radiating from a centre whose brightness no human senses can conceive."

The old man was gone. The joyous bells had rung his requiem. The young heir was enthroned—and with mingled hope and foreboding commenced the reign of 1853.