niture. It was her supreme desire that her children should have the education that their gifted father would wish them to have, the boy going into the father's profession, where he would find many friends. The only plan that suggested itself to Mrs. Merton was that she should let off her house into apartments. This was a sore trial to good Mrs. Merton-a sore blow to that decent pride which may have something wrong in it, but, at the same time, is such a help to most of us imperfect people. The dining-room, where friends had so often gathered round their cheerful board; that exquisite drawing-room, overlooking the gay, bright park, in which she had taken such pride, and which was crowded with tokens of her own fair tastes, must be given up to strangers, who would look upon her as a mere hireling, and would know nothing of the ghostly sympathies and associations which cling to such chambers in their vanished joys. But Mrs. Merton thought she saw her duty, and she did it, though with a laceration of heart and feeling which made those who knew her best wonder how she could possibly go through with her daily work. But she was sustained by duty and love, and duty and love, as is their wont, were now bringing their reward. Her eldest boy was walking the hospital at Edinburgh, with the fairest of fair characters, and every hope of attaining to future eminence. Iler daughter she had sent to an excellent school, where the worthy schoolmistress, though giving her special pains, had made in her case special reductions. Mabel had now finished her education, and was anxious to begin the world as a governess, while her mother was anxious to keep her at home. And the good mother, amid constant occupation and growing interests, had now regained a full measure of cheerfulness and tranquillity. One of Mr. Walton's family friends, hearing of his whereabouts, told him all about the home and family where he lived.

The most stable institution of the Merton household was that every spring there should be a grand

there were numerous and vexatious, but the spring cleaning was the greatest institution of all. In some houses there is such a chronicity about cleaning that I verily believe it is simply a vindictive and retaliatory proceeding adopted towards the race of mankind as an ingenious instrumentation of torture to redress any balance of female grievances that might be standing over unredressed.

It was now the pleasant spring, Easter-tide, the Easter falling late. The cutting nor'-easter had finished its work of cutting and carving at weakly lungs, and old Eolus had bottled up his cast wind in his cellar, and had given us zephyrs as a desirable change. Very pleasant was the change to man, and beast, and little fishes. Among its evidences was the grateful fact which Mr. Walton's eye appreciatingly noted, that a slight glass vase of fresh flowers repeatedly adorned his breakfasttable. Sometimes, in that adjacent room, he heard music, soft and low, such as his soul loved. Once, letting himself quietly in with his latch-key, he heard the silvery ripple of a voice in converse, sound hardly less musical. Once, also coming in very quietly from a dinner-party, he heard a magnificent soprano voice in that next room, which was silenced as soon as the arrival was known. When he was at home music did not ordinarily go on in that adjacent room.

One morning, contrary to her custom, Mrs. Merton made her appearance in his room while he was still at breakfast.

'Mr. Smith, the member, sir,' she said, 'is going out of town for his little parliament holiday.'

'Hope he'll enjoy it, Mrs. Merton, said Walton, with real indifference 'Gentlemen generally go out a few days at Easter-tide. It brightens them up for the season.'

Not at all a bad plan,' returned Walton; a little change brightens us all up.'

'Pray, Mr. Walton,' said the widow, coming to the point, ‘do you intend going away for a few days this Easter?'

'Why, really, Mrs. Merton, I can't say that I am. The fact of the matter is that I had never thought about it.'

Then Mrs. Merton left the room with a somewhat aggrieved and decidedly disappointed air.

The next day, however, she entered his apartment with a braced-up expression of countenance indicative of much mental determination.

'I hope it won't put you out at all, Mr. Walton, but we are beginning our spring cleaning, and we shall want to take up your carpets in a morning or two.'

'Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!' groaned Mr. Walton, burying his face in his hands. He had been familiar with the affliction from his youth up, and here it was once more facing him in all its horrors.

To Mr. Walton, indeed, the calamity was a real one. We are greatly attached to him, but we must also frankly own that he was generally in much of a muddle. He was a man who had really little or nothing to do, but he persuaded himself that he was the busiest man in London. The phrase strenua inertia might have been expressly invented for him. There never was a more pleasant and amiable man. A bit of an artist, a bit of a painter, a bit of a critic and poet, a bit of a mathematician and savant, he had gained a smattering, a footing, in many accomplishments and branches of knowledge without attaining to the slightest proficiency. It was fortunate that he had not to gain his living by this dilettantism. Perhaps if he had he would have been more energetic and have achieved distinction.

He was the most careless man that could be conceived, his room always in a litter-photographs, stamps, stray silver, water-colour paintings, cards, letters, even jewellery, strewed around. It was not even clear that he took the trouble of reading his letters, and friends who knew him would insist on seeing him and not leaving messages, there was so little chance of his ever attending to a message. To such a man the proposition of clearing out his sitting-room was the

most painful and exasperating that could be imagined. But he was too indolent even to object, but acquiesced in fate and the inevitable personified by Mrs. Merton, only begging that the operation might be put off as long as it could, and then be got over as speedily as possible.

The next morning there was an ominous noise overhead which told him that the devastating work had commenced. Huge pieces of furniture were being dragged about, draperies were hanging over the banisters, windows were flying up, small dust was in the air, suspicious-looking females were carrying buckets upstairs, and the spring cleaning was commenced in real earnest. His bedroom was to be ruinated that afternoon, and his sitting-room to undergo the same fate the afternoon following.

That afternoon, when Mr. Walton was out, a gentleman called to see him, and expressed some little annoyance at not finding him at home.

'It is rather important. Can I write him a line?' said the visitor.

The handmaiden said she had no doubt he could, but she would speak to Miss Mabel.

Miss Merton at once asked him into her mother's pretty room, and gave him writing materials. In about a minute he dashed off a short note, and gave particular instructions that it should be carefully delivered to Mr. Walton.

You can bring a horse to the water but you cannot make the noble animal drink. You might lay a note on Mr. Walton's writingtable; you might tell Mr. Walton that there was a note lying on his writing-table; yon might point the note out to him, but you could not insure the certainty that Mr. Walton would open and peruse such a note.

There were several little notes lying on his writing-table when he came home. One, pink and perfumed, from a great lady, asking him to a party, was eagerly opened. Mr. Walton looked meditatively at the others, and shook his head at them, and smoked a meditative cigar over them, and concluded that he would open them next day. One or

two of them looked dunnish. Mr. Walton did not overlive his modest income, but a man of his irregularity generally adjusts things badly, and is liable to get dunned.

The next morning Mrs. Merton asked him whether she should help him put his books and water-colour drawings in order before the charwoman came; but Mr. Walton declared his intention of preparing himself in person for the visitation of these harpies.

"The fact is, Mrs. Merton, I don't mind it now. My books and papers want arranging sadly, and this will be a good opportunity now that I am compelled to arrange them.'

He

The next morning Mr. Walton set his house, or rather his portion of the house, in order; that is to say, he did so according to his lights. He made a glorious litter, and after his manner, meditatively shook his head at it, and smoked a cigar over it. Then he began the work of assorting prints and photographs, which he stopped to gaze on, and of binding up familiar letters which he stopped to read once more. A man does not make much progress in this last sort of work, and it is rather sad work; at least Mr. Walton felt a little depressed. He was two-and-thirty now, and the seven years of his professional life were, he acknowledged to himself, blank and failure. had not got on, and never expected to get on, at the bar. His 'influence,' the powerful friend who had it, might do something for him, only his 'influence' didn't, and that hope deferred was beginning to make his heart sick. He was sufficiently well off to live luxuriously as a bachelor; but it is uniformly your gentle, luxurious bachelor who is always peopling his fool's paradise with a lovely wife and pretty children. Mr. Walton awoke up from this vein of meditation by discovering that he had not many minutes wherein to complete his preparations. These were made with extreme haste and by no means thoroughly. Books, papers, and prints were flung into separate heaps or crammed unsorted into drawers; some stamps and coins

were collected, but more were left lying about, and a general sweep into a huge waste-paper basket of all remaining papers, circulars, &c., carried out his very rudimentary notions of tidiness and good order. Then, as he went out, with a sudden impulse he said to his landlady

As my room will be all in confusion to-night, Mrs. Merton, I will fling myself upon your hospitality for a cup of tea.'

And the good lady assented, before she exactly realized to what she was pledging herself.

Walton refused more than one good invitation for that evening in the course of the day. Somehow he found himself looking forward to the widow's little room adjoining his own. There was a pleasant voice that was musical and low, which that night, should be musical and low to him; which could sing magnificently, and that night should sing magnificently for him. When he got back to the house, after dinner at his club, the place was in the utmost turmoil and disorder, and the little parlour was a perfect haven of brightness and peace. The widow gave him his cup of tea. Mabel was there, a really beautiful girl,-and I am not using that much-abused term lightly -calm and ladylike as a princess. Mrs. Merton, with all her goodness, had, perhaps, rather deteriorated during those years of her widowhood, under the unfavourable process of letting lodgings; but Mabel had all the frankness, grace, and culture that can belong to the wellbred maiden of eighteen. The voice was as low and musical, the singing as glorious as he had anticipated. Walton himself sang well. Let it be said for him that he was a goodlooking fellow, with excessively gentlemanly manners, soft intonation, and large dreamy eyes, but a few grey hairs were prematurely peeping out amid the curly brown.

'I am afraid you are a very careless man, Mr. Walton,' said Mabel. When we went into your room, after you were gone out, we found a couple of photographs, a dozen postage-stamps, and three shillings, in silver and copper, not to mention

a lot of papers, which I am not at all sure that you wished to have destroyed.'

'Oh, never mind the papers,' said Mr. Walton; but I am much obliged for the other trifles.'

There they are, on the mantelpiece,' said Mrs. Merton.

And on the mantelpiece the careless man left them, perhaps on purpose that he might come in and ask for them next day.

It was a delicious evening. Mr. Walton enjoyed himself thoroughly. Such a pretty home scene, by its rarity and attractiveness, pleased him greatly. Such frank confidences and intimacy with two good women, and one young and beautiful, was what he could thoroughly appreciate. He was a man of a very susceptible nature; and, as he took his candle and went up those uncarpeted stairs, picking his way through the débris of the day's hostile work, to his renovated chamber, he thought that if Mabel Merton were only a young lady with an immense amount of money, he could take the whole house off her mother's hands, and live, not unhappily, with her as his wife. Such are the silly speculations of the unoccupied mind.

The next morning he breakfasted in the drawing-room apartment appertaining to the member of parliament, who had gone down for his Easter holiday to see the Volunteer Review. But after breakfast he descended into Mrs. Merton's pleasant sitting-room, to claim the photographs, the stamps, and the stray sixpences. Mabel was there, fresh as the dawn, and with an unrestrained expression of pleasure as the guest of last night entered. He persuaded her to go on with her painting, which his own knowledge of art told him was really excellent. Then they fell into conversation, and she asked him whether he could give any advice or assistance about being a governess. Thus one or two morning hours stole by, and then a servant entered.

'Please, sir, a man at the door wishes to know if you have any answer to the letter which was left here for you the day before yesterday.'

'Dear me! What letter was that, I wonder?' said the careless Walton. It was the letter which the gentleman wrote here,' said Mabel, and which I laid on your desk. 1 told Susan particularly to draw your attention to it.'

So I did, sir,' said Susan.

'I remember it now,' said Mr. Walton; but I am afraid that I never looked at it. What on earth shall I do? Oh, tell the man, Susan, that there is no answer.'

When Susan went to give the message, Miss Merton, with a vague impulse, went out into the passage. The messenger was a highly respectable man, and did not appear to be quite satisfied with the an

It must be particular,' said the messenger, for Sir Charles Vernou said that it was to be sent down to him to-night, in his own despatchbox, to Windsor Castle, where he has gone.'

And the man was gone in a moment.

Mabel was astounded at this remark of the messenger, and hurried to tell Mr. Walton. And Mr. Walton certainly looked seriously discomposed.

'Good gracious, Miss Merton! It is a most important letter-one that I have long expected-from the Secretary of State. Sir Charles must have left it himself.'

Quick as thought, with all the enthusiasm and elasticity of youth, Miss Merton had caught up her hat, and had discerned the messenger afar down the Park, and had started in pursuit.

Walton went into his room, and instituted a thorough search. Alas! his room was now in a frightful state of tidiness. Not a single stray paper was lying about. He went to the drawers and littered their contents to the floor. Then he went down on his knees and searched through them all. Mrs. Merton was summoned-the servants-the harpies

of charwomen-but nothing was known, except that some papers had been torn up and others burnt below stairs.

Just then Mabel returned, and the office-messenger with her. She at once saw the reason of all this confusion.

'Mr. Walton,' she said, blushing, 'after I found those other things in your room, I fancied you might have mislaid some more stamps and photographs in the waste-paper basket, so I told Wilson (an absent assistant at this memorable cleaning) to take the empty waste-paper basket downstairs in mamma's little room, that she might see if you had left anything of importance by accident in it.

Into mainma's little room they went, and Mabel's quick eye soon detected the envelope with her own cipher, which she had given to the caller. Mr. Walton tore it open, and read:

THE of found me

THE afternoon of Thursday, the

once more on my way to Brompton, to witness the Sixth Annual Athletic Contest between the two Universities. The scene was no longer laid at Beaufort House: again the venue has been changed, and the meeting -which has by turns been held at Oxford, Cambridge, and for the last two years on the temporary ground of Beaufort House-seems at length to have found a more suitable and permanent arena on the new ground of the Amateur Athletic Club. Until the day in question I was (I am ashamed to say) in almost total ignorance as to the nature and constitution of the Amateur Athletic Club; but being interested to learn something of a club, which has succeeded in transforming the cabbage garden of November last into the admirable running ground which, on this occasion, met my view, I obtained information as to the club and its members from a source which never fails to afford me the best, upon all subjects connected with Athletics. Some of the particulars which I

gleaned will be interesting to many, especially to those who, thoughfar distant from the scenes of their former struggles and triumphs, cherish the remembrance of those contests, and look with keen interest for reliable information on any great athletic reform. The Amateur Athletic Club was founded in December, 1865, by a few devoted admirers of every kind of athletic pursuit. The original members were chiefly members of the Universities, Army, and Civil Service. Their objects were to establish a representative body which should hold a position analogous to that of the Marylebone Cricket Club in the cricket world: a body which could, by its committee, direct and control all subordinate amateur meetings in the kingdom; which should publish a code of rules to be adopted by all amateur athletic clubs; and which should, in fact, stimulate and encourage every branch of athletic pursuit. How great a success the scheme proved, may be gathered from the fact, that within three months of its foundation it held an amateur champion