Well, "Robinson Crusoe" being their lay gospel and creed, not to say epistle and psalter, it was not queer that one night, when the election had gone awfully, and the men were as blue as that little porcelain Osiris of mine yonder, who is so blue that he cannot stand on his feet--it was not queer, I say, that they turned instinctively to "Robinson Crusoe" for relief. Now, Robinson Crusoe was once in a very bad box indeed, and to comfort himself as well as he could, and to set the good against the evil, that he might have something to distinguish his case from worse, he stated impartially, like debtor and creditor, the comforts and miseries, thus:-- EVIL. I am cast upon a horrible desolate island, void of all recovery. I am singled out and separated, as it were, from all the world, to be miserable. GOOD. But I am alive, and not drowned as all my hope of ship's company were. But I am singled out, too, from the ship's crew to be spared from death. And so the debtor and creditor account goes on. Julia Hackmatack read this aloud to them--the whole of it--and they agreed, as Robinson says, not so much for their posterity as to keep their thoughts from daily poring on their trials, that for each family they would make such a balance. What might not come of it? Perhaps a partial nay, perhaps a perfect cure! So they determined that on the instant they would go to work, and two in the smoking-room, two in the dining- room, two in George's study, and two in the parlor, they should in the next halfhour make up their lists of good and evil. Here are the results:-- FREDERIC AND MARY INGHAM. GOOD. EVIL. We have three nice boys But the door-bell rings all and three nice girls. the time. We have enough to eat, But the coal bill is awful, drink, and wear. and the Larrabee furnace has given out. The firm that made it has gone up, and no castings can be got to mend it. We have more books than But our friends borrow our we can read, and do not care books, and only return odd to read many newspapers. volumes. We have many very dear But we are behindhand 143 friends--enough. names on our lists of calls. We have health in our But the children may be family. sick. The Lowndes children are. We seem to be of some But Mrs. Hogarth has left use in the world. Fred $200 for the poor, and he is afraid he shall spend it wrong. The country has gone to the dogs. GEORGE AND ANNA HALIBURTON. GOOD. EVIL.