"Flowery kingdom" too. Ah, every footfall is like an echo from some deserted shrine; and there is no kind voice to bid them "come again." The little twittering birds are piping the refrain of the sad, sad song of the auctioneer. Others enter now with the keys of a lawful dominion; they unlock the dead chambers, but the fragrance of happy lives is gone like the breath exhaled from the nostril. The stranger never heard the old harpsichord with its responsive chords, as they were swept by mother's lily white hands and almost syllabled her angel voice. They were never charmed by that sweet sunny voice that in so many twilights has been singing vespers in heaven; they know naught of the dead white ashes that lay in the unlighted furnaces of the poor souls, who are saying now so tenderly, so tearfully, to their old home and its memorials, its idols, "Good-bye, good-bye!" Judge Bonham, the purchaser, had been highly distinguished in the civic and military employments of the country. Like his old friend, Colonel Seymour, he was with Lee at Spottsylvania, Gettysburg and Appommattox, and like his colleague in the humiliations of the hour he had declined to "bend the pregnant hinges of the knee that thrift may follow fawning." To say that under all circumstances he maintained a perpendicular, from which there was no swerving backwards or forwards or to the right, or the left would be a falsification of biography. He, like all other mortals upon this terrene had his passions, when his temper, despite curbs and restraints, almost overmastered him. Judicial experiences had affected his manners, so that he appeared austere and unfriendly; but he had a kind heart, open-handed to a fault, true to his convictions, his friends, his God. There were curves and lines in the physical man here and there that appeared misplaced and misshapen. His long stringy hair or what there was left of it, was of a carrotty color, his nose was aquiline with unnatural projections, and his mouth though a little rigid in outline displayed, when animated, a beautiful set of teeth. He was a very scholarly man; a religious man too, and entertained throughout his life strong Calvinistic convictions. It was strange indeed that a gentleman so exemplary in life, should sometimes run the hazard of being suspected as a rogue by those who were ignorant of the infirmity that harassed him all of his years. When meditating upon this playfulness of nature he would observe confidentially, that in any community where he was not known he would be oftener in the State's prison than without it. "Better a Bedouin in the trackless desert than a man who is forever running the gauntlet at such a risk," he said embarrassingly.