interposed, " so you just have it out with me,
aud don't be in a rage about it. Look how
your hand's a shaking. That ain't a sign of being
in the right. It's a sign of a weak mind, that's
what that is."

The evil-faced man put his hand into the
opening of his waistcoat, but he couldn't hide
the quivering of his lips, or get any colour into
his face.

"Now the arguing of this here question is
simple enough—"

"Hear him!" remarked the fat man, looking
round as if he were the proprietor of the steward,
and were proud of him.

"This here," continued the steward, "is a
question of right and wrong. One of us is
right and the other's wrong. Very well. Now
the question is, which is right and which is
wrong—"

"Ah!" sighed the fat man; "he's got him
there."

"Very well," the steward proceeded. " Now
we'll suppose two people standing talking, as it
might be here; one on 'em says, as it might be
me, which it is easy to suppose we are in a
county contigious to this, and that the 'op
gardens is all surrounding us, and the 'op poles
a bending with their weight——"

"You are wandering from the point," says he
of the evil face aud the alpaca coat.

"He looks around him," proceeded the other,
with a graceful wave of the hand, and heedless,
in the fervency of his eloquence, of all
interruption—" he looks around him in all directions.
And he says, leastways I says," continued the
steward, suddenly abandoning his metaphor,
"and why are all these 'ere 'ops, I says, unless
for beer?"

"Ah, why indeed?" echoes the fat man,
smacking his lips. "He's got him again."

"Unless for beer," repeated the steward,
fearful lest if he paused the evil-faced man
should get a chance, " why these crops of
malt?"

"Malt does not grow in crops," interposed
the evil-faced tetootaler, "it is made by man's
wickednes from barley."

"Do you suppose I don't know that?" the
other answered, " when my own uncle on the
mother's side keeps the Barley Mow at
Cobham, and as well a conducted house as any in
the county! Talk about malt, why—-"

"Come," interposes the deep voice of a
policeman, " you must get out of this. Don't
you see you're obstructing the way. Come."

And thus this instructive argument was
brought to an untimely end: to the great annoyance
of your Eye-witness and of two (he will
not say other) old women who were listening in
the crowd.

"I likes to hear them talk," said the first of
these ladies.

"And so do I," replied the other, " they
seems to explain it like. Don't they?"

The other groups of talkers were soon simi-
larly dispersed by the strong arm of the law;
and, as the church was by this time cleared too,
it was not long before the Eye-witness found
himself standing quite alone, in the dark, before
the closed gates of St. George's-iu-the-East.

THE BIRD AND BOWER.

I HAD a little bower when I was young:
   A bird sang there,
And I, poor child, still listened while it sung
   Its magic air.

For still it said, or still it seemed to say,
   " The world is thine;
See how the roses redden, waters play,
   And moonbeams shine.

"See how the sun, with golden dreaming light,
   The valley fills;
See how he crowds with a blue gloom like night
   The noonday hills.

"Deep in the foxglove's bell, where'er thou go,
   Still drones the bee,
And the red trout, where warbling brooklets flow,
   Leaps up for thee.

"For thee the sun and moon were made of yore,
   The cloud and star;
For thee God made the after, the before,
   The near and far—

"All love, all power, all worship, all delight,
   All fancies wild;
All rainbow hopes, all dreams of day and night,
   For thee, O child!—

"The fairy sitting in her home of fern,
   The piping fawn,
The nymph that bears aloft her river urn,
   Or guards the lawn—

"For thee God made the genii of the air,
   And of the deep,
And the quaint elves that charm with witchery rare,
   The world of sleep—

"All, all is thine! thou, thou alone art king,
   Fair, good, and wise!
Fresh, fresh from heaven, before the life's great spring,
   Full-blossomed lies."

Thus in my little bower, when I was young,
   The song began,
And all life's summer through the syren sung,
   To lure the man.

But now grey autumn thins that magic bower,
   The green leaves fall,
And the old glory fades from tree and flower
   When wild winds call.

I hear no more the fairy bugles blow,
   The stars are dim,
I hear no more, at the sea's ebb and flow,
   The sea-maid's hymn.

With lowly heart and meek sad thoughts I stand,
   A dreamer vain;
But ah! that vision of the morning land
   Returns again.

I dreamt it once, perchance as childhood dreams
   When life began;
I dream it now, nor think it less beseems
   The time-taught man.

I cannot tell if I shall find it true
   In worlds afar,
If I shall wiu in that o'er-hanging blue
   My regal star.