CAUSETTE.

A sad-eyed wanderer haunts the classic shades of Harvard, looking out upon the world with a dreamy eye of listless melancholy. For years I have seen him stand, day after day, at certain hours, upon the curbing or near the fence hard by some well frequented thoroughfare, and gaze - gaze with an unutterable yearning in his countenance and such a hopeless expression of resigned patience in his look that many times I have been tempted to stop and commiserate the sorrows of this noble unfortunate. Cold conventionality has held me back. And I have asked with Homer, "Who is he and whence among men; who were his parents and where is his goodly dwelling?" But I have never learned the answers to these questions. The problem of the man with the iron mask counts as nothing with me; here is a secret twice as strange and impenetrable. Some noble object must be his; why does he linger among us - among us and yet not of us? Is he a Polish exile; or was his home once in Iceland's unhappy isle? What is the mystery of his existence?

The life of the poco is indeed a trying one. Beset with arduous cares, compelled at all times to be at his post in rainy or in stormy weather, forced to stoop to petty barter and ignoble shifts. what wonder that his mind assumes a stern and misanthropic cast and that soon

Melancholy claims him for her own?

To him are revealed the cankering cares of our life, the ghastly skeletons dangling in men's closets; and at last, of necessity, he becomes cynical and morose. Among us and yet not of us! Hanging on the outskirts of this pleasant life, catching glimpses of its pleasures and of its mirth, and yet forever barred out from it all and never tasting its joys. A man wearied of life!

And some day he will vanish from our midst and we shall see him no more. The old fable will be realized and the remorseless influence will drag him away. Another will take his place, but all that is picturesque and all that is mysterious will have vanished from our life.

CAUSEUR.