We of the city do not appreciate the blessing of closed windows and silence, until budding Spring comes. The terrific war-whoop of the milkman inaugurates the new-born day long before we should otherwise recognize it. Following him is the rag-man, with his handcart, to which six huge jangling, terrific cow-bells are fastened, as an accompaniment to the yet louder yell of "r-a-g-s." Then comes the "S-t-r-a-w-b-e-r-r-y" man, with lungs of leather, splitting your head, as you try to sip your coffee in peace. Close upon his heels, before he has hardly turned the corner, comes the pine-apple man, who tries to outscreech him. Then the fish-man, who blows a hideous tin trumpet, loud enough to rouse the Seven Sleepers, and discordant enough to set all your nerves jangling, if they had not already been taxed to the utmost. You jump up in a frenzy to close the window, only to see that the fish-man has stopped his abominable cart at the door of a neighbor, who keeps a carriage and livery, and is therefore fond of cheap, stale fish; where he is deliberately cleaning and splitting them, and throwing the refuse matter in the street, as a bouquet for your nostrils during the warm day. Then comes a procession of heavy carts, the drivers of which are lashing their skeleton nags to fury, with loud cracks of their whips, to see which shall win in the race, while every one of your window-panes shakes as if an earthquake were in progress, as they rumble over the stones. By this time comes a great mob of boys, with vigorous lungs, tossing each other's caps in the air, and screeching with a power perfectly inexplicable at only six, ten, or twelve years of practice. Indeed, the smaller the boy the bigger is his war-whoop, as a general rule. Then comes a wheezy organ-grinder, who, encouraged by the fatal show of plants in your windows, imagines you to be romantically fond of "The Morning Star," and immediately begins, in verse, to describe how he "feels." Nothing short of fifty cents will purchase his absence, which encouragement is followed by some miserable little rats of boys, anxious to succeed him on the violin and harp.

Boston is a lovely place to be baptized in, and to go back to. My old love, "Boston Common"—that good, old-fashioned, unspoiled, unmodernized name—looks more lovely this summer than I ever remember to have seen it. New York may well take a lesson from its order and neatness, with regard to our ill-kept city parks. I sat there, under those lovely trees which used to wave over my school-girl head; and had it not been for the little bright-eyed grandchild beside me picking buttercups, I might have fancied it was Saturday afternoon, and no school, and that I was to be back to my mother's apronstrings "by sundown, without fail." I know I could not have enjoyed even then the birds' song, or the sparkling pond, or the big trees more than at that moment. Out of my dream-land, whither they had led me, I was awakened by a jump into my lap, and the question, "And did you really play with buttercups here, when you were a little girl?" It was a long bridge that question led me over, so long that I forgot to answer till the question was repeated. I had to stop, and outgrow buttercups, and hold again by my matronly hand a little creature, the counterpart of my questioner, who long since closed her eyes forever, in this world, upon us both! It took time, you see, before I could say, "Yes, dear; it was just in this very lovely spot that both your mother and I picked buttercups when children, on the bright Saturday afternoons of long ago; and six years and a half of your little life I have waited, to see you run down those sloping paths, and to show you the 'Frog-Pond,' and to tell you to look up into the branches that nearly touch the sky; and now here we are! But there were no 'deer' feeding on this Common when I was a