would care to join in a rubber but for the crow of it. It is such a glorious thing to throw the ace of trumps upon your adversary's king, or to win the odd trick by any means just as the opposite party were gloating over the thought that the prize was theirs. Depend upon it the charm of the game dwells not in the winnings, which are a matter of trivial consideration, but rather in the crowing which brings with it a delightful sensation. And so, indeed, it is in every kind of competition. What is it that gives zest and true enjoyment to the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race; to the Derby and the Ascot; to the cricket-matches between Eton and Harrow; to the lunatic proceedings of the "Spelling Bee"? It is nothing more nor less than Cock-a-doodle-doo. The country is far more favorable than the town to the comfortable and frequent enjoyment of "crowing;" for Mrs. Grundy lives almost exclusively in the country, there inculcating that meddlesome interference with other people's affairs which supplies perpetual opportunities for a "crow." In a village every new bonnet is a crow" for the wearer; but no great mischief is done, for the girl who is crowed at to-day knows that next Sunday it will be her turn to crow.

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Crowing," therefore, is not without its pleasant uses. While kept strictly within the bounds of good taste and good feeling, it is in truth one of the means and appliances of happiness. It is only when it is suffered to transgress those limits that it degenerates into ill-nature and becomes odious. There is a kind of 66 crow "which is little less than fiendish in its malignity-that comprised in the reproachful and triumphant exclamation, "I told you so!"

"Of all the horrid hideous notes of woe,

Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast,
Is that portentous phrase, 'I told you so,'

Uttered by friends, those prophets of the past
Who, 'stead of saying what you now should do,
Own they foresaw that you would fall at last,
And solace your slight lapse 'gainst bonos mores
With a long memorandum of old stories."

Of this, rest confidently assured that the man who, in the hour of your defeat and mortification, would taunt you with the good advice he gave, and you discarded, chuckles in his sleeve at your disaster and finds in a spiteful "crow" at your expense ample compensation for any inconvenience your misfortune may have caused him. It was a lad of that ungracious type, take my word for it, who, when trouble had befallen his father and mother, instead of sympathizing with them as a good son would have done, crowed after this insolent fashion :

"Cock-a-doodle-doo !

Mother's lost her shoe,

Father's lost his fiddle-stick

And doesn't know what to do,

Sing Cock-a-doodle doo!

The boy who could express himself thus unfeelingly had in all probability purloined both the shoe and the fiddlestick, and did not care a straw what inconvenience his parents might be put to in consequence. And to think what a vile ignoble creature man is! and what a seraphic being is woman! It is an every-day occurrence to hear husbands say to their wives, "I told you so ; but who in this world ever yet heard a wife address her husband in any such terms? There is not one solitary

instance upon record of a wife having ever spoken these words or any similar ones to her spouse. And yet there are brutes who would not give women votes ! Why, it is only women who should be allowed to vote. Then, again, there are dunces whose joy knows no bounds if they can only catch you tripping in a quotation. True, they are themselves the merest smatterers. You may have read, from cover to cover, more books than they ever heard the names of; and it is like enough that the particular passage in which you are at fault is the only one in the language that they know correctly. They may have picked it out of a dictionary of quotations, or it may have served them in childhood for a copy-slip. These considerations might teach them modesty. If they were really erudite they would be generous, remembering that "what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning: and that the writer shall often in pain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow." But considerations such as these are beyond the appreciation of the shallow. They cannot afford to be generous. So, by all means let them have their little "crow." Compliment them on their erudition, and express your profound admiration of the splendor and variety of their genius. That is the only way to be even with such small deer.

THE COMFORT OF BEING DOWN IN YOUR LUCK.

IT

T is no uncommon habit with men who, as the phrase goes, "have not succeeded in life" to cherish a morbid sentiment of pitié de soi, as though they were the martyrs of a destiny exceptionally severe. This opinion involves a delusion egotistical as irreverent. It is egotistical as arrogating for the man who holds it undue importance in the economy of nature that he should be deemed worthy of such penal distinction; it is irreverent as ascribing to Providence the cruelty and injustice of marking out particular individuals of the human race for a rigor of treatment amounting to persecution. A fallacy lies at the bottom of the whole conception, the fallacy of supposing that no penalties, but privileges and prerogatives alone are attached to greatness. The heathen philosophers fell into no such error. They reminded the world that the Angel of death knocks with impartial foot at the palaces of kings and the cottages of poor men; and they depicted the warrior in the proudest hour of his triumph as riding jubilantly along, with Care seated behind his saddle. A dispassionate view of mundane affairs must conduct us to the conclusion that while the opportunities of happiness are distributed equably throughout all classes of the community, they are but a handful of people to whose lot fall the gifts of Fortune. Here too the Ancients were wiser than are many of our Christian sages. It was a proverbial saying among the Romans

"Non cuivis contingit adire Corinthum "—it is not every one who can get to Corinth; and the liability of the good and patient to have their wealth and honor wrested from them by others has been nowhere illustrated more ingeniously than in the melodious verses of Virgil, “ Sic vos non vobis," etc. Felicity is independent of rank and affluence, and is often found in highest perfection where these are not; but "success" in the worldly sense of the word is rare indeed :

"Order was Heaven's first law, and, this confest,
Some are and must be greater than the rest,
More rich, more wise, but who infers from hence
That such are happier shocks all common sense."

He who, overlooking this great truth, broods darkly over his own disasters, while men of inferior worth are wealthy and eminent, will do well to bear in mind that failure to attain not alone fame and fortune, but even a competency is the inevitable lot of the overwhelming majority of mankind. No man-being nothing more than man-ever concentrated in his own person the sorrows and disappointments of the human race. Myriads of the noblest men and women who ever adorned humanity have had to struggle hopelessly with misfortune from the cradle to the grave, and have passed away leaving no more memorial than if they had never existed. They were good and gifted-rich in mental as in moral attributes of choicest excellence,— but though their friends may dwell lovingly on their memories, the world knows them not and never knew them. Men and women of much smaller desert are remembered; but they are never named. To make the amount of a man's success the measure of his merit is a