In the mean time, our young Doctor is playing truant oftener than ever. He has brought Avis,--if we must call her so, and not Delilah,--several times to take tea with us. It means something, in these days, to graduate from one of our first-class academies or collegiate schools. I shall never forget my first visit to one of these institutions. How much its pupils know, I said, which I was never taught, and have never learned! I was fairly frightened to see what a teaching apparatus was provided for them. I should think the first thing to be done with most of the husbands, they are likely to get would be to put them through a course of instruction. The young wives must find their lords wofully ignorant, in a large proportion of cases. When the wife has educated the husband to such a point that she can invite him to work out a problem in the higher mathematics or to perform a difficult chemical analysis with her as his collaborator, as less instructed dames ask their husbands to play a game of checkers or backgammon, they can have delightful and instructive evenings together. I hope our young Doctor will take kindly to his wife's (that is to be) teachings. When the following verses were taken out of the urn, the Mistress asked me to hand the manuscript to the young Doctor to read. I noticed that he did not keep his eyes very closely fixed on the paper. It seemed as if he could have recited the lines without referring to the manuscript at all. AT THE TURN OF THE ROAD. The glory has passed from the goldenrod's plume, The purple-hued asters still linger in bloom; The birch is bright yellow, the sumachs are red, The maples like torches aflame overhead. But what if the joy of the summer is past, And winter's wild herald is blowing his blast? For me dull November is sweeter than May, For my love is its sunshine,--she meets me to-day! Will she come? Will the ring-dove return to her nest? Will the needle swing back from the east or the west? At the stroke of the hour she will be at her gate; A friend may prove laggard,--love never comes late. Do I see her afar in the distance? Not yet. Too early! Too early! She could not forget! When I cross the old bridge where the brook overflowed, She will flash full in sight at the turn of the road. I pass the low wall where the ivy entwines; I tread the brown pathway that leads through the pines; I haste by the boulder that lies in the field, Where her promise at parting was lovingly sealed. Will she come by the hillside or round through the wood? Will she wear her brown dress or her mantle and hood? The minute draws near,--but her watch may go wrong; My heart will be asking, What keeps her so long? Why doubt for a moment? More shame if I do! Why question? Why tremble? Are angels more true? She would come to the lover who calls her his own Though she trod in the track of a whirling cyclone!