“She is mine, Lucy! this brave, proud, generous little Kitty, is mine! And because she is given to me in this eleventh hour, I feel that she is a ‘gift of God,’—a gift unspeakably precious. My heart is _full_ of ‘thanksgiving and the voice of melody,’ for we are one now—one forever—in life and in death, one. I shudder when I think how she has twice been nearly lost to me—once by her own lofty pride, and again by the Angel of Death, who seemed a terror-king when he hovered beside her. She is so pale and weak, so unlike her former self in physical beauty, that I tremble when I look upon her; yet I know, Lucy, that she will not die. We shall both live, to prove, on earth, how strong a tie of love unites us.” Yes, they did live to prove it; and certainly a happier poet never breathed, than he whose bright and cheering songs, springing from a deep, clear fountain in the heart, went afterward, floating over the wide earth—they were the most glorious “songs of the affections.” And so you have the long and the short of the matter. You know as well as I, all that poor Katy did! How many times on this great earth have “trifles, light as air,” set all the world a-gadding! Alas! yes, creatures as brainless and chattering, and far less innocent, than the insect disputants, have we humans too often proved ourselves. Many a great matter has a spark of fire kindled; and the “Comedy” has become a rare thing in comparison with the Tragedy of Errors. * * * * * THE GAME OF THE SEASON. BY FRANK FORESTER. BAY SNIPE SHOOTING. [Illustration] The Hudsonian Godwit. _Limosa Hudsonica. Vulgo._ Ring-tailed Marlin. The Red-Breasted Snipe. _Scolopax Noveboracensis. Vulgo._ Robin-breast, Quail Snipe, Dowitcher. Under the general, and very incorrect appellation of Bay Snipe, and sometimes of Plover, the sea-shore gunners, and city fowlers who accompany them for pleasure, are wont to include many totally distinct and different families of waders, each containing several varieties, and all, though in some sort connected, entirely dissimilar in characteristics, plumage, cry and flight, as well as in some peculiarities of habit. Of these families, the most remarkable are the Curlew, _numenius_; the Godwit, _limosa_; the Sandpiper, _tringa_; the Tattler, _totanus_; the Plover, _charadrius_; the Snipe, _scolopax_; the Turnstone, _strepsilas_; the Sanderling, _calidris_; the Avoset, _recurvirostra_; and the Stilt, _himantopus_; all of which at some period of the year are visiters or temporary inhabitants of some portion of the Atlantic shores of North America, from the Bay of Boston to the Belize.