gipsy-parties by day, impromptu balls at
night:

All went merry as the marriage-bells.

Some months afterwards, the marriage bell
went indeed from the quaint old church near
Clevedon Hall. It might have seemed like
cruel kindness in Clayton to insist that I
should be present at the wedding-breakfast;
but he meant it in friendship. To me it fell
to propose the health of the bride (ah, arch,
rare Miss Martindale!) and groom. One
part of my speech was received with
distinguished approbation. It was that passage
in which from the cornucopia of blessings
which I desired for them, I singled out this
special one: that their happy home might
never be darkened by the invasion of a
putter-down.

SOWING AND REAPING.

Sow with a generous hand,
  Pause not for toil or pain,
Weary not through the heat of summer,
  Weary not through the cold spring rain;
But wait till the autumn comes
  For the sheaves of golden grain.

Scatter the seed, and fear not,
  A table will be spread;
What matter if you are too weary
  To eat your hard-earned bread:
Sow, while the earth is broken,
  For the hungry must be fed.

Sow;—while the seeds are lying
  In the warm earth's bosom deep,
And your warm tears fall upon it—
  They will stir in their quiet sleep;
And the green blades rise the quicker,
  Perchance, for the tears you weep.

Then sow,—for the hours are fleeting,
  And the seed must fall to-day;
And care not what hands shall reap it,
  Or if you shall have pass'd away
Before the waving corn-fields
  Shall gladden the sunny day.

Sow, and look onward, upward,
  Where the starry light appears—
Where, in spite of the coward's doubting,
  Or your own heart's trembling fears,
You shall reap in joy the harvest
  You have sown to-day in tears.

THE OFFICIAL BLACK SWAN.

THE official black swan is the Post Office.
It is the one government office that consents
fairly to take the measure of its work, and
to do it, in the most direct way possible. No
doubt the daily friction with the entire body
of the public is the cause of this, and not any
inherent virtue in the Post-Office itself as a
department. A few thousand inventors or a
few hundred thousand colonists can easily be
dealt with by routine; but the necessity of
daily contact with the millions at home
compels activity. Therefore it is that the
letters of the present generation are not, in
the ordinary course of government routine,
delivered to the next: the invitation of
Belinda to a ball is not doomed to wait for an
application to the right department upon
affidavit to the order of the deceased old lady's
heirs, administrators, and assigns.

Three hundred years ago an important letter
of state was more than three days and three
nights on the post-road from the Archbishop
of Canterbury at Croydon to the Secretary of
State at Waltham Cross, a distance of sixty
miles. Less than two hundred years ago, a
coach and six horses, aided by a government
pension, undertook the carriage of the mails
in six days from Edinburgh to Glasgow
(forty-four miles) and back, but found the
work too arduous. Less than a hundred
years ago the first mail coach was seen in
Edinburgh. Twenty years ago there was no
penny postage. Ten years ago there were no
means of transmitting money cheaply by
post. Five years ago there was no "book
post. Of progress of this sort, the public
has a tolerably accurate impression.
Nevertheless, how much advance is made
from year to year, how the efficiency of the
Post Office department is maintained—not by
its being crystallised into a given form; but
by its daily life and growth, and an incessant
process of development—we have been able
only lately to perceive.

This busy department, working with
and for the public, has a right to demand
that the public should work with and
(to a certain reasonable extent) for it; the
public's profit and advantage being in each
case the object sought. Last year the Post
Office began the plan of issuing yearly
reports, whereby the community might see
what it was about; and wherein and for what
reason help of any kind might be afforded
to it. The second of its reports has just
been issued, and out of it we proceed to
illustrate what we have here been saying.

We begin at once with the last year's
advances. Within the twelvemonth five
hundred and twenty-five new post-offices
were opened for the increased accommodation
of the public; and, by the appointment
of rural messengers in places too small to
warrant the establishment of an office, a
nearer approach has been made to a
delivery of letters throughout all the nooks
and crannies of the country. The deliveries
were extended last year to one thousand
ihree hundred and twenty-seven places,
where, before, they did not exist; and the
free delivery was improved in six hundred
and fifty other places. Pillar letter-boxes in
the streets of towns have been tried, and
found successful; therefore it is intended
that their number shall be largely increased.
The chief advantage is, that collections may
be made from them at hours when it would
be unreasonable to expect private