wood-choppings and brook-clearings, but the fancy cut and decoration of which had hitherto prevented their being given away. There was as much fun as anything else in bestowing them upon the ragged and merry old basket-maker. But, by dint of long keeping and tumbling over, they had insensibly become the furniture of my remembrance of gay life in London; and to meet them now, suddenly, on the road, zig-zag-ing about on legs and arms a hundred years old, and bound to finish their career in unhoused dirt and vicissitude—there was a mingled drollery and contradictoriness in the confused impression, which made me both laugh and grow thoughtful. If there must be reappearances of one's coats and trowsers, it would be pleasanter to see them in their cleanly and decent wont—not spattered with mud while they are honored by longer wear—and if I had foreseen the venerableness of these after-walks of mine, I certainly should have selected the pantaloons of a plainer period. You see my old-clothes moral, I hope.
My friend, the merry centenarian, has called on me once since. He was finding it too cold in the mountains, and was going over into Jersey for the winter. My velvet facings and silk braids had proved good material for "swap," and he had parted with all of my toggery except the hat—the pillow-and-cushion duties of this last, however, having rendered its previous history a matter of pure
