MY CASTLE IN THE AIR.

FOR some years it has been one of my favorite castles in the air to imagine myself suddenly thrown into the society of some beautiful, unsophisticated country girl, such as one reads about in the back of the speller, - a girl wholly untrammelled by the conventional shackles of society, the communion with whose fresh, ardent soul would nerve me to new struggles with this hard old world.

Until last summer I had failed to find my ideal; but, while travelling from Portland to Bangor, I met her. The train had just stopped at a small way station; but, as I was deeply interested in "Troublesome Daughters," I paid no attention to the passengers who got in, except that I was dimly conscious of some one asking me if the seat next me was engaged. I replied "No without raising my eyes from my book. A female sat down beside me. A few minutes passed by in silence, when the woman sighed heavily. Now if there is one thing more than another which affects me, it is a woman's sighs (pity the pun). I dropped my book and looked. Heavens! What a vision! Beautiful light brown hair, very dark brown eyes, perfect features, and a figure that would have thrown all the Venuses of Milo in the shade. My ideal was realized, for that she was a country girl, the basket which she carried, containing an apple and a sandwich, bore direct testimony. I noted all these points in a twinkling of an eye, for two years in a class like '82 develops one's eye for female beauty amazingly. My heart throbbed as she gazed at me in a pensive manner and sighed again. I resolved to storm the fort at once, and, bracing myself on recollections of conquests in the 'Port, I began: "O most bewitching stranger, know that you have before you a youth who for five summers has sought a maiden like you. A youth who wants to find a girl untarnished by the chromo civilization of the 19th century. She must know nothing of germans, lawn tennis, or the opera; her mind must be as fresh - as fresh - as - as a freshly cleaned blackboard on which I shall stamp the imprint of my superior intellect. She must be a country girl, in fact. I will come and board for the summer months at her father's house; daily I will accompany her to the old oaken bucket, and fill and carry her pail to the house; during the day we will roam hand in hand through the woods while I pour sweet poetry in her ear; then at even-time we will go to the meadow and bring the cattle home, and I will stand by my dear one in the barn-yard, repeating 'The Cotter's Saturday Night' while she milks the bosky cows. Then in the fall I will leave her, promising, as I press her to my bosom, to return in a week and marry her. Winter will come, but not I; the sweet maid will droop and fade, no longer singing about her daily task; finally she will die and be laid away in the cold earth, while a stranger from the city (that's I) will come and drop a tear over her grave. Say, dearest maid, will you be such an one to me? That sigh betokens regard, I know; speak quick, I pray you, in order that I may get a stop-over for the next station."

She turned her large lustrous eyes upon me and spoke: "Well, of all the living fools, you be the biggest. You're right about my not knowing nothing about lawn tennis and such like, and I guess father could kinder take you to board for the summer at six dollars a week, money paid every Saturday, but all them other things you said hain't no more sense to 'em than apple-parings. Think I'd have you carrying my water-pail round and pestering me all day 'pouring sweet poetry in my eye'? I think I see myself! As for your reciting the 'Potter's Saturday Night' while I milk, I guess them clothes of yours ain't meant to travel round our barn-yard much, 'sides, the smell of the yard ain't always agreeable to city folks. And I wasn't sighing about you, but because ma didn't put any doughnuts in my lunch basket; and I looked at you because you looked so like red-headed Sam Smith who is gone daown to Waterford College." All this volleyed at me in a nasal twang from a mouth lined with bad teeth, accompanied by a healthy smell of onions, was too much for me, and I was driven to the smoking car and the solace of a cigar.