Truly, our greatest blessings are very cheap. To have our sunlight without paying for it, without any duty levied,—to have our poet there in England, to furnish us entertainment, and what is better provocation, from year to year, all our lives long, to make the world seem richer for us, the age more respectable, and life better worth the living,—all without expense of acknowledgment even, but silently accepted out of the east, like morning light as a matter of course. * * * * * APRIL. Now fitful clouds scud o’er the skies, And fairy showers patter by, And in the wood the low wind sighs, And shadows o’er the brown fields fly! Low fades the sun, then blazes out, Glinting on grass, and twig, and tree— Ah! April, boyish out and out, Now tears, and now all jollity! * * * * * MR. KERR MUDGEON. OR “YOU WONT, WONT YOU?” BY JOSEPH C. NEAL. [Illustration] There; now! You see—do you not?—Nay, you may almost hear it, if you listen attentively. Mr. Kerr Mudgeon—great many of the Kerr Mudgeons about, in various places—but this Mr. Kerr Mudgeon—going to a party as he was—desirous too, as people generally are on such occasions, of looking particularly well—and all ready, to his own infinite satisfaction—all ready except the final operation of putting on his bettermost coat—has torn that important article of gentlemanly costume—one may work without a coat, you know, and work all the easier for the relief; but it is not altogether polite to leave it at home on a peg when you go to a party. Torn his coat—not through his own fault, as Mr. Kerr Mudgeon would tell you explicitly enough—he never is, never was, never can be in fault—but because of that coat’s ill timed and provoking resistance to the operation of being donned. The coat might have known—who is ever thus to be trifled with in the process of dressing? Yes, the coat must have known. Ah, coats and the makers of coats have much to answer for. Kerr Mudgeon is ruffled, ruffles of this sort, causing a man to look none the handsomer or the more amiable for the ruffle. Such ruffles are not becoming. “Ho! ho! wont go on, hey?” cried Mr. Kerr Mudgeon, and Mr. Kerr Mudgeon panted and Mr. Kerr Mudgeon blew, on the high pressure principle, until the steam of his wrath had reached its highest point. It is a fearful moment with the Kerr Mudgeons, when it is manifest that something must break—a blood vessel or the furniture, or the peace of the commonwealth. Why will things animate and inanimate conspire to bring about such a crisis? Kerr Mudgeons would be sweet tempered if you would only permit them. The coat positively refused to go on any further—the contumacious raiment. What could Kerr Mudgeon do in such a strait of perverse broad cloth?