"I wonder," said Lillie, with a half-vexed air, after her partner had placed her beside her mother, while he hastened to procure some refreshments for us, "I wonder what Mr. Carlton dances for. I would not take the trouble to stand up in a quadrille, if I were in his place. He always talks so much as to quite forget the movements of the dance. He renders me more nervous than any partner I ever have, for I dislike to see my _vis-a-vis_ so bored. Just now he went through the whole "language of flowers" in my bouquet, which would have been interesting elsewhere, for he quotes poetry right cleverly; but it was a little out of place where the bang of the instruments, and the _chazzez_ and the _balancez_ made me lose one half of his pretty eloquence. Quadrilles are senseless things any how;" and our pretty Lillie actually yawned as she begged to know if it was not time to go. "You know, dear mamma," she said, "that I have to arise very early to-morrow morning, to help Tom in that hard lesson he groaned so pitifully over to-night." As we left the ball-room, and were making our adieux to the fair hostess, I overheard young Carlton say reproachfully to Lillie, "And so you are going to leave without dancing that next quadrille with me. I know my name is on your tablets. This is too unkind, Miss Mason." Young Carleton is very devoted; but if his devotion is only a passing caprice, our Lillie will not be injured by it. There is no danger of her "falling in love" hastily, even if the lover be as handsome and interesting as the one in question. Luckily for her happiness, her mother, profiting by her own sad experience, has cultivated the sweet blossoms of domestic love, and, as she says, "My Lillie's heart will always belong, at least two-thirds, to her mother and family." MIDNIGHT. BY THOMAS BUCHANAN READ. The moon looks down on a world of snow, And the midnight lamp is burning low, And the fading embers mildly glow In their bed of ashes soft and deep; All, all is still as the hour of death-- I only hear what the old clock saith, And the mother and infant's easy breath, That flows from the holy land of Sleep. Or the watchman who solemnly wakes the dark, With a voice like a prophet's when few will hark, And the answering hounds that bay and bark To the red cock's clarion horn-- The world goes on--the restless world, With its freight of sleep through darkness hurled, Like a mighty ship, when her sails are furled, On a rapid but noiseless river borne. Say on old clock--I love you well, For your silver chime, and the truths you tell-- Your every stroke is but the knell Of Hope, or Sorrow buried deep; Say on--but only let me hear The sound most sweet to my listening ear, The child and the mother breathing clear Within the harvest-fields of Sleep.