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and were landed on Long Island. The prisoner was here taken to a house which they made their head-quarters, with no very enviable hopes for the future, as he now felt that he was removed at such a distance from his friends that he might be dispatched with impunity. This was a trying hour for a youth of eighteen. But his friends were in pursuit; they traced the party to the mouth of the river, where they found a person who knew the rendezvous of these men on Long Island. They soon manned a whale - boat and pushed across the sound. They attacked the house, and made the whole party, with the exception of one, prisoners; among them was an English lieutenant. They also succeeded in escaping with the whole number, and in bringing them across to Stratford. Our hero was taken from his hiding-place; he had heard the tumult in the house, not knowing into whose hands he might now fall, and was so frightened and confused that he shouted lustily, "God save the king."

The parties connected with this affair at Guntown were tried; one was sentenced to be executed, another had his property confiscated.

The writer has learned this story from one who heard it from our hero. To add to the romance of the matter, it is certainly unfortunate that the young man's tory mistress was not the means of effecting his escape; I should furthermore be happy to state that the two were afterward united in the holy bonds of matrimony, as all true lovers should be. But, so far as I know, these things have not transpired.

The settlement known as Union City is in the town of Naugatuck, about one mile north of the center. In its immediate neighborhood are several prosperous manufacturing establishments. The view which I present was sketched a short distance south of the place, upon a hill near the Naugatuck Road. The house appearing in the distance is known as the "old Goodyear place," and was for many years the home of Charles Goodyear.

THE age of crusades was the youth of modern Europe. It was the time of unsophisticated feelings and ungovernable passions; the era of love, war, enthusiasm, and adventure.-Schlegel.

SELF-ACTING INDICATOR BEE

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STAND.

[UMEROUS as are the contriv

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ances for facilitating the study of the honey-bee, we have not one which enables the bee-keeper to note the daily progress of a colony in the accumulation of a store. To know the weight of a hive, we must bring out a tripod and steelyard, and move the hive from its site; and even then we cannot judge accurately as to daily or weekly progress; in fact, we only learn the gross weight when we weigh it, and compare one weighing with another. In order to judge of what has been accomplished in the interim, I have lately thought of a plan by which the daily, even hourly progress of

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a hive may be known, by a self-acting apparatus of most simple construction; and as this is the time to determine whether a new appliance shall be tried or not, I venture to submit my plan to your apiarian readers. If I wait until I have put it into practice, the communication may appear too late to be of use to others during the present season.

Construct a pedestal for a hive on the plan represented in the diagram. Let it be formed telescope fashion; a turned pillar, A, working in the manner of a piston inside a brass or copper cylinder B. Inside B, and beneath the pillar A, is a spiral spring of brass or steel; and on this spring the pillar A presses, more or less, according to the weight superincumbent upon it. In the front of the cylinder B are two open slits, and between them an index, marked in accordance with the strength of the spring. The right-hand slit is simply a groove, in which a finger, c, works freely up and down, when moved by the hand, and a screw fixes it wherever it may be required to remain. The finger d is attached to the base of the pillar A, and the slit in which it works is quite open; so that as A presses down the spiral spring the finger d marks the gross weight of hive, hive-board, sufers, bees, and honey. At e, a thumbscrew passes through the rim of the cylinder B, to press against the pillar A, and retain it in its position. This is to prevent any jerking upward of the hive on the removal of a cap or sufer.

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The use of the contrivance can need but little explaining. The hive, with its swarm and floor-board, is placed on the pillar, and its gross weight is immediately marked by the finger d. Suppose the gross weight on the afternoon of the swarm being hived to be 10 lbs., fix the finger c at 10 lbs., and the finger d will the next evening show the actual amount of work accomplished in the formation of comb, etc. If a sufer is put on, let the additional weight noted by d be added to the former weight of the hive, as indicated by c; so that whenever you desire to know the total weight of the contents, you have but to deduct the weight registered by c from that indicated by d, and the product is the answer required.

By such a plan we might compare hives, swarms, and localities with each other, the index showing the daily, even hourly progress of each. The effect of a few fine days in May would be pleasingly evident; and it is likely enough that, with the help afforded by the thermometer, the time for putting on sufers, or opening the partitions in collateral boxes, would be very definitely noted. But such, and other uses that may arise, I leave to the consideration of those who may care to adopt my invention.

The above contrivance would doubtless prove interesting and valuable to the apiarian. It is not at all necessary that the hive itself should be of the particular form indicated by the engraving, though we should prefer one somewhat ornamental.

IT

AN OLD MAID'S ROMANCE.

has been objected to a recent publication that the author, in delineating the various phases of the character of "the True Woman," omitted, and, to use an Americanism that is becoming popular, ignored that large and respectable class denominated Old Maids. Whether this omission was intentionally disrespectful, intending to imply that every true woman of marriageable age must, of necessity, be linked to one of the other sex, it is not my purpose to inquire. I do know, that there have been many true women who have chosen to live in single blessedness; and in every life-even the quietest, even the least disturbed and eventful-there is some little vein of romance, some golden vein in the earthy ore, if we might be permitted to trace it in the sunshine. I do not like to think that any of the thousand throbbing, hoping, fearing hearts I meet can be all clay, all indurated selfishness; the hardest, most unpromising people, for aught we know, may have acted long romances in their own proper persons, and have grown cold and passive after them to a degree that would lead one to believe they had never felt.

There was Miss Fernley, for instance, a maiden lady of immense antiquity, whom we used to visit when I was a little girl. She lived in a large, genteel, red-brick house, inclosed in a stiff garden, with a great iron gate. Miss Fernley was precision and neatness personified, but her parlor was intolerably dull and gloomy; moreover, it was infested with three of the surliest cats I ever knew, and a parrot, the most vixenish of its race. I remember with awe the solemn tea-parties, to which all the children of her acquaintance were annually invited. Depression fell on my spirits as the gate clanged behind me; by the time my bonnet and cloak were taken off I was rigid; and when I was set down on a stool, at a considerable distance from the fire, but within reach of the cats, I was petrified into stupidity for the rest of the night. Miss Fernley delighted in me accordingly; she was accustomed to say to my mother, that I was "such a quiet, prettily-behaved child ;" and in consequence she often sent for me to spend the afternoon on Saturday half-holiday, giving as a reason that she liked company. She was a kindly, ceremonious old lady,

with no idea whatever of amusing a child. Every time I went she gave me an old brocaded-satin bag filled with ends of worsted and silk; these she bade me sort out into packets according to color; and when she had done that, she let me alone until tea-time. Once I abstracted from its shelf an illustrated copy of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, in which Apollyon was represented as a handsome Crusader in scale-armor, standing on prostrate Christian. I did admire Apollyon, he was so grand, and had such wings; but an audible remark to that effect caused me to be immediately deprived of the book, and in all subsequent visits at this period my attention was divided between the end-bag and the cats.

Miss Fernley's parlor never underwent any change. If one of her pets died, it was replaced by another of the same sex and color. All the cats were king-cats, and gray; and they did spit sometimes! The straight-backed, slender-legged chairs always stood primly up by the walls; the heavy sofa preserved its angle by the fireside as if it were fastened to the floor; and the discordant old piano was forever open. I used to perform upon it a line and a half of" Paddy Carey," the only tune I knew without music, every time I went. Later in life, I did the "Caliph of Bagdad" and the "Battle of Prague," to Miss Fernley's delight; and I remember her once singing to me, with the remains of a very sweet voice, "The Woodpecker tapping," and a little Spanish air.

There were two circular portraits in this room of Miss Fernley's brothers, both in uniform; the elder had been drowned at sea, and the younger killed in battle. She loved dearly to talk of these two brothers, when once she had begun to be confidential, and would quote a great deal of poetry in her narrative of their histories; I believe she grew to love me for the interest with which I always listened to the oft-told tales. It probably never occurred to me until some years later to think whether she was a pretty or an ugly old lady; she was tall, thin, stiff; scantily dressed in silks of a uniform cloudcolor, with a lofty-crowned cap with a good many white bows; she wore a frill of fine rich lace about her neck, and ruffles at her wrists when nobody else did, and had a particularly precise and almost courtly air; I should say she was proud;

and one bit of ceremony always observed by me to the day of her death was, never to sit in her presence until invited to do so. The way I became acquainted with the life-romance of this gray, lonely old lady was as follows. She invited me to take up my abode at her house for a week when I was about sixteen, to be company for three madcap girls, her nieces, and daughters of the younger brother whose portrait decorated the dismal parlor. Their exuberant spirits were very trying to Miss Fernley; they outraged the cats by dressing them up in nightcaps and pockethandkerchiefs; they taught the parrot to be impertinent, and broke the strings of the old piano.

One long wet day their pranks went beyond all bounds; they wanted to act a play in the drawing-room, and to bribe them from their intention, Miss Fernley gave them the key of a great lumber-room, and bade them go and ransack the chests of ancient apparel therein contained for amusement. Up we all accordingly went. Out upon the dusty floor, with screams of laughter, the wild girls tossed armfuls of garments of all degrees of hideousness and antiquity; startled sometimes by a moth fluttering out from the heaps, and arrested often by the sight of some article of attire more curious than the rest. One of them-Letty, the youngest-lit upon a sack of crimson silk, and immediately cried out that she would dress up, and astonish Aunt Jeanie. Her costume, when completed, was rather incongruous; but a quaint old mirror against the wall showed her a very pretty, if fantastic figure, draped in the crimson sack, with amber - satin petticoat, and a black Spanish hat, with a plume shading down over her golden hair. Lettie Fernley was a bright-complexioned lassie; and as she walked a stately step before the glass, you might have thought her a court beauty of fifty years ago stepped down out of a picture-frame.

Meanwhile the eldest sister had been pursuing her investigations into the depths of a huge black trunk, and drew forth a packet of letters tied round with a faded rose-color ribbon. "What have we here?" cried she; "a mystery, a romance; somebody's old love-letters!"

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ing aside her impatient fingers; "let us consider a moment before we disturb old memories. What hand traced these discolored characters? Is the hand dust yet, or only slow and heavy with the dead weight of age?"

"Have done with your speculations, Minta, and let the letters speak for themselves," interrupted Lettie eagerly.

Minta loosened the string, and divided the packet carefully. A piece of printed paper fell to the floor: it was a column cut from a newspaper; the story of a great battle, and an incomplete list of killed and wounded.

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Let us lay that aside till we seek a clew for it; till we see whose name on that list is connected with these letters," suggested Minta; and we all approached our heads close together to read the faded yellow pages. The first letter bore date half a century ago; the writer was one Francis Lucas. We had never heard the name before; but we conned the lines lingeringly and with interest, for they were such as all hearts echo to-warm, loving, tender.

"Francis Lucas, whoever you may have been, one thing is sure," said Minta, as she read; “you were a gentleman and a true knight of dames. I can picture to myself the blushing face that fifty years ago bent over these lines, and laid their sweet promises away in a heart as worthy as your own."

We paused long over that letter; for its speech was so full of life, and love, and hope, that we were loth to put it away among the things of the past; almost as loth as must have been the "darling mouse" to whom it was addressed: it still breathed the same old song of love and trust which is never out of date, and sounded as true as earnest passion ever does.

There were seven letters in all among the Cumberland Fells; and the last spoke of a speedy meeting in words that thrilled all our maiden pulses.

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"O, Francis Lucas, I hope you were happy with your faithful heart,'" cried Lettie. "I hope you and your true love live yet in a green old age together."

The next letter was written after an interval of two months, in May, 17-. In an instant Lettie, still in the crimson Francis Lucas was then a volunteer in the sack, was down on her knees by her sister, army; and his bright glad words reflected full of vivid curiosity. the high courage which he knew "would "Gently, gently," said the other, turn- make his darling love him more." Those

were his words. There was but one other; it was very short, written on the eve of battle, and it was the last.

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“O, Minta, I could weep for that 'faithful heart,'" said Lettie, with tears in her eyes. "Look at the list now; it is no longer a sealed page to us; there is his name-Francis Lucas, killed.' There the story ends."

"But the dear mouse,' the faithful heart,' who is that?" asked Minta, turning the yellow paper over, while Lettie idly twisted the ribbon that had tied the letters together; "who can it be ?" The moisture cleared from our eyes slowly; more than one great tear rolled down my cheeks. "It is Aunt Jeanie, Aunt Jeanie !" suddenly exclaimed the second sister, who had read in silence. "You remember, he says darling Jean' in the first letter."

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Aunt Jeanie," echoed Lettie. "O, I wish we had not been so curious; it was very wrong of us!"

"But who could have thought there had ever been a love-story in her quiet life?" said Minta. "How beautiful and how nice she must have been! I dare say she might have been married over and over again."

"I am glad she was not; I shall like to think of her as Francis Lucas's 'faithful heart' better than as the richest lady in the land."

"And so shall I; and O, Minta, how we have plagued her! Help me off with this red thing," said Lettie, pulling at the crimson sack. "It would be profanation to go to her jesting, after what we have just found out. Dear Aunt Jeanie! If she has had a faithful heart, she must have had a suffering one too."

SO

The door opened softly, and Miss Fernley looked in. "Children, you are quiet, I am sure you must be in mischief," said she, in her gentle voice. She came among us, and looked over Minta's shoulder as she sat on the floor with all the papers scattered in her lap; stooping, she took up the strip of newspaper, and gazed at it through her spectacles; I saw her lip quiver and her hands tremble.

"Where did you find these letters, children? You should not have opened that black trunk," said she hastily. "Give them to me; have you read them?"

"Yes, Aunt Jeanie," replied Lettie, penitently. The old lady took them from Minta's hand without another word, and

left us to our researches; but we had seen enough for one morning, and quickly restored the old dresses to their dusty receptacles, and left them to the moths and the spiders.

When we descended to the parlor, rather subdued, and ashamed of our curiosity, we found Miss Fernley rummaging in an ancient Japan cabinet; she brought out two miniatures, and showed them to us; one was Francis Lucas, a young, gaylooking soldier, the other was herself. The latter bore a marked resemblance to Lettie, only it was softer and more refined in expression. Then she told us her love-story; how she was to have married Francis Lucas on his return from that fatal campaign, and how she had consecrated to him, in life and death, her faithful heart.

"O, Aunt Jeanie, I may be like you in the face, but if I were to live to be a hundred I should never be as good or as kind as you are!" cried Lettie as she finished. And this was the romance of old Miss Fernley's youth.

THE MOUNTAIN STREAM.
LIST to the song of the mountain stream,
From its old rocky chamber springing;
Hailing the earliest morning gleam,
With its frolicking-sparkling-singing!
"O, 'tis a glorious thing to bound

Through a world of such wondrous beauty; The flowers are breathing sweet odors around, And hark! the old woods with gay music resound:

Pleasure is glancing,
Sunbeams are dancing,
Life is a boon, and enjoyment a duty!"
List to the song of the mountain stream,
As its murmurs are gently swelling,
Bounding along with its noontide theme,
Of the glory of labor telling.
"I'll water the land, and cool the breeze,

And set the young grass blades growing;
I'll creep round the roots of the old oak-trees,
And call to the cattle their thirst to appease.
Lambs shall come skipping,
Birds shall stoop sipping;
All shall be glad for my pure limpid flowing."
List to the song of the mountain stream,

As it rolls with its heaving motion, Calmly reflecting the sun's last beam,

Ere it loses itself in the ocean: "No more through the beautiful vale I'll wend; I have finish'd life's changeful story; Peacefully-thankfully seeking the end, Where with the main, my small tribute shall blend,

Mingling-not dying,
Smiling-not sighing,
Singing forever His greatness and glory.”

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