_LOVE AND THE BLUE FLOWER._ We were all at tea last evening, and at the tea-table we talk more than usual, for the tea is but the shadow of a meal with the harmless inspiration of the tea-pot. Thus it happened that each began to tell of what had occurred in his or her little world during the day. Aurelia had a thousand things to tell about the intellectual and physical miracles performed by that wonderful baby, which, of course, every baby, from Cain down, has performed. But they were performed for the first time for her, and of course we listen to them as if they were new revelations to us, and we would not for the world dissipate the bright colors with which she invests all that little one does by telling her that every mother's world is glowing with the same pretty colors, or that all of us once were just as wonderful babies as hers, only somehow we lost all our supernatural powers as the years came and went. Celeste had been shopping, and her tongue ran glibly on the "beautiful," "sweet pretty," "lovely," "delightful," "loves of," etc., fabrics which she had seen at Hamlin's, and she grew quite indignant when she told how young Yard Stick became angry when he had pulled down seventy-three different pieces of dress goods, only to find that she merely dropped in to look about a little; neither was it any compensation to that intellectual and highly artistic youth when she purchased a ball of tape. Mrs Blobbs said but little, for it had not been with her one of those days which we lay away tied up with white ribbon. Old Blobbs had come home from the office earlier than usual, looking very pale and very feeble. A dark shadow is sweeping across the house--so dark that we do not see any light beyond it, and the waters through which the dear good woman is wading, grow deeper and deeper, and the mists which begin to blind her eyes are those which forever haunt the Valley of the Shadow. Old Blobbs was with us at the table but said nothing. The contracted brow and firmly-set mouth, the great veins in his forehead and the far-off look in his eyes, told us of suffering, and that even now he foresaw a messenger coming to him with tidings, of the purport of which he was well aware. Fitz-Herbert had had nothing to do all the livelong day, and Boosey was not much better off, so these two young gentlemen had little to say for themselves. Mignon had dreamed the day away, feeding the canary, tending her mignonettes, and heliotropes, and fuschias, and weaving delicious little reveries on the piano. She lives only among beautiful things, and could not exist away from them, any more than a humming bird could live, deprived of its roses and tulips. Blanche's story was supplied by a letter which Mignon had just received from her, and as it contained an important piece of intelligence, she read it to us, as follows: SARATOGA, August 10. _Dear, Darling Mignon_: