Some seconds less would do no hurt.
Of pictures, I should like to own

Titians and Raphaels three or four, -
I love so much their style and tone, -

One Turner, and no more, -
(A landscape, - foreground golden dirt

The sunshine painted with a squirt.)
Of books but few, - some fifty score

For daily use, and bound for wear;
The rest upon an upper floor; -

Some LITTLE luxury THERE
Of red morocco's gilded gleam,

And vellum rich as country cream.
Busts, cameos, gems, - such things as these,

Which others often show for pride,
I value for their power to please,

And selfish churls deride; -
ONE Stradivarius, I confess,

TWO Meerschaums, I would fain possess.
Wealth's wasteful tricks I will not learn,

Nor ape the glittering upstart fool; -
Shall not carved tables serve my turn,

But ALL must be of buhl?
Give grasping pomp its double share, -

I ask but ONE recumbent chair.
Thus humble let me live and die,

Nor long for Midas' golden touch,
If Heaven more generous gifts deny,

I shall not miss them MUCH, -
Too grateful for the blessing lent

Of simple tastes and mind content!
MY LAST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

(A PARENTHESIS.)
I can't say just how many walks she and I had taken together before

this one. I found the effect of going out every morning was
decidedly favorable on her health. Two pleasing dimples, the

places for which were just marked when she came, played, shadowy,
in her freshening cheeks when she smiled and nodded good-morning to

me from the school-house-steps.
I am afraid I did the greater part of the talking. At any rate, if

I should try to report all that I said during the first half-dozen
walks we took together, I fear that I might receive a gentle hint

from my friends the publishers, that a separate volume, at my own
risk and expense, would be the proper method of bringing them

before the public.
- I would have a woman as true as Death. At the first real lie

which works from the heart outward, she should be tenderly
chloroformed into a better world, where she can have an angel for a

governess, and feed on strange fruits which will make her all over
again, even to her bones and marrow. - Whether gifted with the

accident of beauty or not, she should have been moulded in the
rose-red clay of Love, before the breath of life made a moving

mortal of her. Love-capacity is a congenital endowment; and I
think, after a while, one gets to know the warm-hued natures it

belongs to from the pretty pipe-clay counterfeits of them. - Proud
she may be, in the sense of respecting herself; but pride in the

sense of contemning others less gifted than herself, deserves the
two lowest circles of a vulgar woman's Inferno, where the

punishments are Smallpox and Bankruptcy. - She who nips off the end
of a brittle courtesy, as one breaks the tip of an icicle, to

bestow upon those whom she ought cordially and kindly to recognize,
proclaims the fact that she comes not merely of low blood, but of

bad blood. Consciousness of unquestioned position makes people
gracious in proper measure to all; but if a woman puts on airs with

her real equals, she has something about herself or her family she
is ashamed of, or ought to be. Middle, and more than middle-aged

people, who know family histories, generally see through it. An
official of standing was rude to me once. Oh, that is the maternal

grandfather, - said a wise old friend to me, - he was a boor. -
Better too few words, from the woman we love, than too many: while

she is silent, Nature is working for her; while she talks, she is
working for herself. - Love is sparingly soluble in the words of

men; therefore they speak much of it; but one syllable of woman's
speech can dissolve more of it than a man's heart can hold.

- Whether I said any or all of these things to the schoolmistress,
or not, - whether I stole them out of Lord Bacon, - whether I

cribbed them from Balzac, - whether I dipped them from the ocean of
Tupperian wisdom, - or whether I have just found them in my head,

laid there by that solemn fowl, Experience, (who, according to my
observation, cackles oftener than she drops real live eggs,) I

cannot say. Wise men have said more foolish things, - and foolish
men, I don't doubt, have said as wise things. Anyhow, the

schoolmistress and I had pleasant walks and long talks, all of
which I do not feel bound to report.

- You are a stranger to me, Ma'am. - I don't doubt you would like
to know all I said to the schoolmistress. - I sha'n't do it; - I

had rather get the publishers to return the money you have invested
in this. Besides, I have forgotten a good deal of it. I shall

tell only what I like of what I remember.
- My idea was, in the first place, to search out the picturesque

spots which the city affords a sight of, to those who have eyes. I
know a good many, and it was a pleasure to look at them in company

with my young friend. There were the shrubs and flowers in the
Franklin-Place front-yards or borders; Commerce is just putting his

granite foot upon them. Then there are certain small seraglio-
gardens, into which one can get a peep through the crevices of high

fences, - one in Myrtle Street, or backing on it, - here and there
one at the North and South Ends. Then the great elms in Essex

Street. Then the stately horse-chestnuts in that vacant lot in
Chambers Street, which hold their outspread hands over your head,

(as I said in my poem the other day,) and look as if they were
whispering, "May grace, mercy, and peace be with you!" - and the

rest of that benediction. Nay, there are certain patches of
ground, which, having lain neglected for a time, Nature, who always

has her pockets full of seeds, and holes in all her pockets, has
covered with hungry plebeian growths, which fight for life with

each other, until some of them get broad-leaved and succulent, and
you have a coarsevegetabletapestry which Raphael would not have

disdained to spread over the foreground of his masterpiece. The
Professor pretends that he found such a one in Charles Street,

which, in its dare-devil impudence of rough-and-tumble vegetation,
beat the pretty-behaved flower-beds of the Public Garden as

ignominiously as a group of young tatterdemalions playing pitch-
and-toss beats a row of Sunday-school-boys with their teacher at

their head.
But then the Professor has one of his burrows in that region, and

puts everything in high colors relating to it. That is his way
about everything. I hold any man cheap, - he said, - of whom

nothing stronger can be uttered than that all his geese are swans.
- How is that, Professor? - said I; - I should have set you down

for one of that sort. - Sir, - said he, - I am proud to say, that
Nature has so far enriched me, that I cannot own so much as a duck

without seeing in it as pretty a swan as ever swam the basin in the
garden of the Luxembourg. And the Professor showed the whites of

his eyes devoutly, like one returning thanks after a dinner of many
courses.