Half an hour elapsed: the sun was beginning to descend, when the sound of wheels was again heard, and a light wagon with four places and a brisk little horse came rattling down the street. A pleasant-looking fellow jumped down, took off his hat and said he had come to drive us to Perugia. We jumped up joyfully, but I asked the price. "Fifty francs"--a sum about equivalent to fifty dollars in those regions. I smiled and shook my head: he eagerly assured me that this included his _buon mano_ and the cost of the oxen which we should be obliged to hire to drag us up some of the hills. I shook my head again: he shrugged and turned as if to go. My unhappy fellow-traveler started forward: "Give him whatever he asks and let us get away." I sat down again on the steps, saying in Italian, as if in soliloquy, that we should have to go by the train, after all. Then the new-comer cheerfully came back: "Well, signora, whatever you please to give." I named half his price--an exorbitant sum, as I well knew--and in a moment more we were skimming along over the hard, smooth mountain-roads: we heard no more of those mythical beasts the oxen, and in two hours were safe in Perugia. THE PARADOX. I wish that the day were over, The week, the month and the year; Yet life is not such a burden That I wish the end were near. And my birthdays come so swiftly That I meet them grudgingly: Would it be so were I longing For the life that is to be? Nay: the soul, though ever reaching For that which is out of sight, Yet soars with reluctant motion, Since there is no backward flight. CHARLOTTE F. BATES. A NIGHT AT COCKHOOLET CASTLE. I. Cockhoolet was the name of the place: it was a farm of which the Ormistons were and had been tenants for several generations. A father, mother and five olive-branches made up the family. A healthy, happy, united, thriving family they were, and as such much respected. There were two sons and three daughters, the eldest of whom was Bessie, the "Rose of Cockhoolet," as she was called; for that she had all the beauty and sweetness of the rose was generally allowed, although there were people who could not be made to see this--people who were probably idiopts; not idiots--although they might have a streak of idiocy in them, too, perhaps--but idiopts, or persons who were color-blind. None of the young men of the district were color-blind.