like mine that looks to better things, scarcely
companions. I am a dreamer."

He was pacing up and down, delivering his
speech with singular fluency. "A dreamer! Yes.
Such dreams! During that illness you cannot
fancy what dreams, and even visions—especially
one night—here—in this house!"

He halted suddenly on his beat and looked at
her. Again the carmine flood was gushing to
the surface. "Curious, wasn't it?" he said, resuming
his walk. He was charmed with the
whole situation. It seemed to him that she was
"hanging on his words." She was "under a sort
of spell," he thought, afterwards. If he were a
man inclined to boast, what a thing to tell—to
overwhelm those creatures at the barracks.

He was surprised at his own fluency. He went
on, still pacing: "You don't care to trust me, and
yet, perhaps, I might be found useful. I often
think I should have been a priest. Yes, I should
have liked to have been a priest. To have sat all
day long in a confessional—and yet, I dare say, I
could guess the whole state of things. I have
an instinct for human affairs, a strange instinct.
I can read a situation like a book. I can read
minds, too. For instance, I can take the front
of this house off and look in. I know at once
who are my friends,"he went on; "in this house,
how many have I? Possibly not one." This last
sentence he spoke in a low, half-melancholy tone.
"Possibly not one!" he repeated. "But that
is a mere personal view. What does it matter?
The other day, if there had been a little rough
stone where I fell, why I should not be talking
to you here—perhaps boring you terribly."

"No, no, no!" said the girl, casting down her
eyes; "I could listen for—that is, I like hearing
it."

"Then, as for you," continued he, glancing
at the other Fermor in the mirror, " I can
understand it all. Relatives, sisters, mothers,
brothers, who have our interest at heart, and
think they understand it better than we do,
hurrying us eagerly on into some serious step—
all for our good," added he, sarcastically. "Dear
Miss Manuel, I feel like an old friend to you, and
seriously for it would be affectation in me to
say I do not see that you have something on
your mind seriously, if by advice or assistance
I can be of use, pray employ me."

She looked up at him with her full round eyes,
now little, glistening, and tearful.

"O!" she said, "Mr. Fermor, I am unhappy,
very unhappy; I don't know what to do. They
are so kind, and so good, and mean so well, and
all for my interest."

"Exactly," said he, smiling. "Everything
disagreeable is for our interest." His intuitive
knowledge of nature was surprising to himself.

"And I am, I may say, alone in the house,
without support, and I do fear I shall be hurried
into a step—which—"

Fermor went over, and sat down beside her on
the sofa. He was going to hear it all. It was
growing dusk. At that moment the door was
opened. A joyous, noisy, hearty figure burst
in.

"We have been waiting for hours," it said :
adding, after a bewildering pause, "What!
Fermor?"

A POLITICAL PARROT.

A WARM day in spring in New York often
means a hot day, such as oppresses London in
August. The air seems full of gold-dust heated
to the boiling point, and a native American takes
to ice cream and brandy smashers remedially.

I was on "the shilling side of Broadway" (I
do not know the origin of this derogatory
designation) on one of those hot mornings in spring,
when the metropolitan disposition to ice cream
impelled me into a confectioner's shop. The back
parlour of a former aristocratic dwelling was the
refreshment-room. Its large windows looked towards
the east, and the room was flooded with
sunshine, such as a Londoner is never blessed nor
blinded with;—for there are two sides even to the
subject of sunshine. In the warm heart of the
light there was a brilliant green parrot, fastened
by a silver chain to a perch, where she seemed
to rest from pure choice. She was singing as I
never heard a parrot sing with human naturalness
and rollicking joyousness. The song, an
ancient favourite with a certain class in the land
of its birth, had met favour with all classes in
the land of its adoption:

O, it's my delight on a shiny night, &c.

She sung it all, without once stopping or breaking
down.

The waiter, who wiped the small table where
I had seated myself and handed me the daily
paper fastened in a machine lest it should run
away, remarked, "Twenty year old, if she's a
day!"

I gave my order, and then listened to the
song until it was finished, as a respectful audience
should, not interrupting to applaud. Then I
said, "Bravo, Polly!"

The parrot turned her head, and looking at
me sharply, said, rapidly, "What's your name?
What do you want? Can you whistle?"

"What's your name?" I replied, in Yankee
fashion: answering one question, or three, with
another.

"Pretty Poll, pretty Poll, poor Poll! Polly
wants a cracker. Polly Brown, Polly Brown,
Captain John Brown's bird, ship Midas. Bought
of a nigger king on the Gold Coast for a pair of
red breeches and a roasting-pig. Brought to
Philadelphia in eighteen hundred forty. Don't
you know the devil's dead? Choked to death
with a Quaker's head. Captain Brown's bird.
Captain Brown's a Whig, wears a clean shirt."

This sent the parrot's associations to sea, and
she proceeded to heave anchor with a will,
changing merrily to sailor songs till an imaginary
storm came on. Then she gave orders through a
speaking-trumpet, proving that she had been forgotten
and left on deck in a squall, and that she
had not been so much frightened as to interrupt