John Wilde grows thin and haggard—he mumbles
with his mouth;
His eyes are fixed and arid, like one consumed with
drouth.
It is the dead of winter—his hands with cold are
sear'd;
The sweat is on his forehead, but the frost is in his
beard.

Still ploughing, ever ploughing! though the sleety
mists environ,
And the plough goes through the furrows, like iron
into iron.
Still ploughing, ever ploughing—but see! he cannot
stand;
There is darkness all about him; he has fallen upon
the land!

The horses come home early; but their master—
where is he?
Some neighbours go to seek him, where they know
that he must be;
And there they find him lying, all stiff and stony-
eyed,
Stretched full-length in a furrow—and a ducat by
his side.

Oh, wretched fool! what matter how fast the plough
he drave?—
In ploughing up his ducats he was digging his own
grave!
John Wilde of Rodenkirchen died many a year ago:
Still many for gold are delving, whom gold will
soon lay low.

BLIND SIGHT-SEEING.

IT was travelling on the railroad from
Orleans to Amboise, that I first met Monsieur
and Madame Faye, who were returning from
Paris to Tours. There was a little bustle,
just as the train was starting, in consequence
of late comers. The only wonder is how any
Frenchman manages ever to be ready,
considering the immense amount of talk and
leave-taking which seem a part of their existence,
—and I, amongst others, put out my
hand to help in an apparently infirm man,
whose agitation seemed to prevent him from
knowing where to take his seat. I pointed to
that next to me, pulling his coat to force him
into it, that we might not all be inconvenienced
by his lingering. He bowed and smiled, and
continued to talk to a female who followed
him; and who began to stow away numerous
baskets and bundles which she was tightly
embracing, thanking us, all the time, for our
politeness to her husband. In a few seconds
they were seated, and we then had leisure to
remark the appearance of the new travellers.
The gentleman was rather past middle age,
good-looking, neatly dressed. He had a
cheerful, pleasant countenance and soft mild
eyes, which he directed towards those to whom
he spoke, although we afterwards found they
possessed no speculation. The lady was
anything but tidy in her style; indeed, so much
the reverse, as to be surprising in a French-
woman; but her story, when it was told me
at our next meeting at Tours, explained the
peculiarities which made her at first an
object of somewhat disrespectful observation.

We soon became good friends. Monsieur
Faye was blind, and had been so from childhood.
His cousin, Mathurine, had proposed
for him when they were both about five and
twenty, and had, from that time, devoted
her whole life to attend on him.

"I should not," she said, " have asked him;
but that my brother, who required my
services because of his lameness, determined
just then to marry; and therefore, as I had
a substitute with him, and poor dear Hector
here was too modest to ask me, what else was
to be done?"

I found, on further acquaintance, that
Hector was a remarkable personage in his
way: a bit of a musician, a philosopher, an
antiquary, and a great reader of or rather
listener to history; for it was his little, lively,
untiring wife, who read to him from morning
till night; and sometimes, when he could not
sleep, from night till morning.

I found Mathurine incessantly occupied
with the well-being of Hector. She might
have been pretty at the period of their union,
probably some twenty years before; but her
small, slight figure was rather awry, in
consequence of having, for so long a time, served
as a prop to her tall husband, who always
leant on her shoulder as he walked. She
seemed indeed altogether out of the
perpendicular; her bonnet never sat straight,
owing to its being pushed aside by his
arm; her shawl had the end anywhere but
in the middle; her gloves were generally
ragged at the fingers, while I observed that
his were carefully repaired—it being evident
that my friends were obliged to practise
economy; her shoes were shabby, with the
strings often untied. "What would you
have? " she once remarked laughingly. " I
have no time to attend to these trifles;
which, after all, don't signify; for I am not
coquette and he does not see me. I catch up
the first thing that comes to hand, and he
fancies I am quite a belle."

Hector had the strangest voice I ever heard;
it would begin contralto and run up to alto in
an incredible manner when he was excited;
and then fall down again to the gruffest bass,
his little brisk wife's treble accompanying so
as, as she imagined, to soften the sharp effects
he produced.

She had managed to learn several languages
in order to read to him the authors he
admired in the original; and odd enough
her versions were; but, as he perfectly
comprehended the jargon they had studied
together, her plan succeeded admirably.

Amongst Monsieur Faye's peculiarities
was that of being an inveterate sight-seer.
There was no object of interest near the
places he visited that he had not, as he said,
seen; and no sooner did he hear a description
of a castle or a cathedral than he