sol; and, thus accoutred, I determined to | make one desperate effort to brave the heat of the sun, that was baking the pavement of Santa Lucia, and emitting a glare that acted like a burning-glass upon my eyeballs. As we walked through this ordeal, we passed close to an assembly of young lazzaronis, basking in the sun, near to a stall; there they lay in the midst of fish-bones, orangepeels, and decayed melons. We evidently excited their mirth: and I, in particular, felt myself privileged to be laughed at,for what could be more grotesque than my appearance? One of the boys was standing. We had scarcely turned our backs upon them, when I received a blow on the head from a melon-rind;-I turned about, and immediately the whole gang ran off laughing. I would have followed; but, in truth, was too tired. I could scarcely move but at a slow walk. The boys stopped, and looked at us. At length, making a virtue of necessity, I called out to the boy who had thrown the melon-rind, to come to me-he hesitated; I called again-he was evidently puzzled, and suspicious of my intention; I then showed him a carline, "Come here," said I, "take this." "In the name of goodness!" exclaimed T "what are you about?" "Never mind," said I, "stop and see." The boy at length took courage, and came to me. 66 Here," said I, "bravo! bravissimo! avete fatto bene! take this." Upon which, in surprise, the boy, taking the piece of money out of my hand, ran off in the greatest exultation, showing it to his little friends as a prize fallen down from heaven. Now do tell me," said T-," what demon of madness can have possessed you? You ought to have broken every bone in that young rascal's skin, instead of feeing him for insulting us." So I would," said I, "if I could; but to catch him is impossible. By feeing him for his insolence, he will probably throw another piece of melon at the first Englishman he sees, who will, no doubt, give him the beating which I cannot." Tlaughed heartily at the ingenious turn which my indolence had taken-administering a beating à ricochet, as he called it; and, having reached my room, we laughed over our adventure, and speculated upon the beating the youngster would get. And, true enough, the next day, as we were seated on one of the benches of the Villa Reale, we heard a sort of hue and cry on the Chiaja, and shortly after, saw our carroty and irascible friend W appear, foaming with rage, streaming from every pore, owing to some recent exertion, and exploding with bursts of execration. He came straight to us— "Who ever knew such an infernal country as this ?" said he, "D- then all for a beggarly set of villains. Did you ever see the like! I gave it him well, however, -that's some comfort. "The young rascal won't forget me, for some time, I'll warrant you!" T and I smiled at each other in anticipation of the reason, which only made him more furious. "Here," said he, was I walking quietly along, when a young rascal of a lazzaroni thought fit to shy half a water-melon at my head;-you may laugh; but it was no laughing matter to me, nor to him either, for I half killed the young urchin; and then forsooth, I must have half the town of Naples upon me, backed by all their carrion of old women. We allowed his rage to expend itself, and said nothing, for fear of being impli cated in his wrath, inasmuch as I was the origin of his disaster; but, truly indolence was never so completely justified, as on this occasion. FAMILY READING. J. M. "It wasn't half so funny though, as that about the check They caught somebody forging, 'cause he was so green, I 'speck.' "But the thing I liked the bestest," Alonzo piped again, "Was how somebody yunned away, and won't come back again, the rest of our tribe. See how white I am becoming." "My daughter," said the Duchess, languidly, as she seated herself on a convenient bowlder, "you should be proud of the dif ference. It is a distinction. higher race." We are a I don't know, mamma. See what cauAnd took somebody's wife with him upon a folks can hang from the trees by their tails, dal appendages we have. All the other yailyoad train." "Oh, I wa'nt, hey?" trilled Alonzo, dismayed to be outdone; "I'm goin' to learn to yead myself, and you can have the Sun, And I'll yead Herald 'Personals,' and never tell you one!" but we are compelled to sit on the limbs." "We are advancing, my dear. You are whiter than I am. You can talk in your youth; I could not until middle age. Your grandmother, as you know, can only grunt. You are moving to a higher sphere." "Well, mamma, none of our folks will marry me," said Lady Adeliza, pouting. "No, my child; it has been decreed that there should be a selection of the fittest in marriage. We have offered you to the Prince d'Orang-Outang, who is even whiter than you are, as his wife." "Oh, mamma," gushed the Lady Adeliza, "that's splendid. Will he come soon? "Restrain yourself. People of high blood and short caudal appendages never get exOn either knee an infant form he did reverse cited. He will be here in a short time." The American male parent, his hair arose on end; and bend, And from their little mouths straightway made dismal howls ascend. R. H. NEWELL. ("Orpheus C. Kerr." "THE ORIGIN OF MAN." BY DARWIN. CHAPTER I. ""T WAS a lovely summer morning, in the year 9001 before Christ. The woods of Senegambia were clothed in their fairest costume, the lovely birds were chirping and singing their morning lays; the sky was one vast sheet of blue-everything, in short, was full of sweetness and light, except the lovely Lady Adeliza de Chimpanzee. She was in the dumps. Moodily she rubbed her shoulders against a huge palm-tree, and while performing this act heaved a vast sigh. Just at that moment her mamma dropped from the tree above her. "My daughter," said the Duchess de Chimpanzee," why that sigh?” Lady Adeliza went away to look for cocoanuts, and the duchess sat on a rock, and reflectively scratched her head. CHAPTER II. THE Duke de Chimpanzee was chief of a very large tribe. If he had been in the show business he would have made an everlasting fortune. He had but one daughter, the Lady Adeliza, and as she would inherit the live stock over which he ruled, youths of the neighboring tribes desired to marry her. Her parents, however, desired that she should be, if possible, the fountain of a new race, to which all their traditions told them they were working up. They determined that she should wed the Prince d'OrangOutang. The duke proposed the matter to the prince. Aw! said the Prince, as he adjusted his eye-glass; is it nice?" "She is beautiful," replied the duke. "Aw!" said the Prince; "give it much stamps?" "I shall give her all Ethiopia," replied the duke. "I will-aw-step down, and-aw-look Ah, mamma, look at me," said Lady at it," murmured the prince, carelessly. Adeliza. "See how different I am from" By surprise, you know." This was agreed upon, and the duke de- | body. All the wise men examined it. It parted. The prince knew his worth. He was quite white, and was not troubled with the slightest particle of caudal appendage; but Ethiopia was a big prize, and he resolved to win it. One week after the duke had of fered his daughter, the prince started for Senegambia with the intention of looking at the fair face of Adeliza. CHAPTER III. THE Prince was wandering through the woods of Senegambia gaily singing, I would be a butterfly, when his eyes fell upon a lovely chimpan- The Duchess de Chimpanzee, who had witnessed the meeting from behind a clump of bushes, chuckled, and slid off on her left ear. "Adeliza," sighed the Prince, “thou art aw-beautiful. Wilt thou-aw-marry me?" The Lady Adeliza threw the remains of her cocoanut at the head of a chimpanzee who was loafing in a neighboring tree, fell into the arms of the prince, and gently murmured, "I am thine." They were married in great splendor. The Right Rev. Bishop Baboon, assisted by Rev. Simiader Ape, performed the ceremony. The bridesmaids wore their natural clothes. The choir sang the lovely anthem, "Monkey married the Baboon's Sister." Lady Adeliza and her parents rubbed noses, and then the bride started on her tour on an elephant with one trunk. CHAPTER IV. THE seasons changed; summer lapsed into autumn, autumn into winter, winter into spring. Then there was a great rejoicing, for the Lady Adeliza gave the prince an heir. The child, however, was an anomaly in that region. It had no tail; it had flat feet; it had a white skin; it had no hair on its was not an orang-outang: it was not a chimpanzee; evidently it was a new species. Then a family conclave was called. "What shall we call it?" asked everybody. The Duchess de Chimpanzee, who was languidly making mud pies, said, "Let us call it-MAN!"—Harper's Magazine. wee SHE brought it over to our house, Mrs. Bascom did. It was their first-a little, red-faced, pug-nosed, howling infant. It was one of the hottest days in July, but she had it wrapped up in three shawls and a bed quilt, and was in agony every moment for fear it would sneeze. "Do you see his darling, darling little face?" she said to me as she unwound him about forty times and looked to see which end its feet were on. I looked. I have been the father of eleven just such howling little wopsies, and I don't see anything remarkable about Bascom's baby. "See those eyes; that firmness of mouth; that temper in his look!" she went on. I saw them. The little wretch began to get red in the face and to beat the air, and his mother shouted: "He's being murdered by a pin! She turned him wrong end up, laid him on his face, then on his back, loosened his bands, rubbed the soles of his feet, and the tears stood in her eyes as she remarked: "I know he won't live-he's too smart." The child recovered; and, as he lay on his back across her knees and surveyed the ceiling, she went on : "Such a head! Why, every one who sees him says that he is going to be a Beecher. Do you notice that high forehead?" I did. I thought he was all forehead, as his hair didn't commence to grow until the back of his neck was reached; but she assured me that I was mistaken. "Wouldn't I just heft him once?" I told her that I never saw a child of his weight weigh so much, and she smiled like an angel. She said that she was afraid that I didn't appreciate children, but now she knew I did. "Wouldn't I just look at his darling little feet-his little red feet and cunning toes?" Yes, I would. She rolled him over on his face and unwound his feet and triumphantly held them up to my gaze. I contemplated the hundreds of little wrinkles running lengthwise and crosswise-the big toes and the little toes, and I agreed with her that so far as I could judge from the feet and the toes and the wrinkles, a future of unexampled brilliancy lay before that pug-nosed infant. He began to kick and howl, and she stood him on end, set him up, laid him down, and trotted him until she bounced his wind-colic into the middle of September. "Whom did he look like?" I bent over the scarlet-faced rascal, pushed his nose one side, chucked him under the chin, and didn't answer without due deliberation. I told her that there was a faint resemblance to George Washington around the mouth, but the eyes reminded me of Daniel Webster, while the general features had made me think of the poet Milton ever since she entered the house. That was just her view exactly, only she hadn't said anything about it before. "Did I think he was too smart to live?" I felt of his ears, rubbed his head, put my finger down the back of his neck, and I told her that in my humble opinion, he wasn't, though he had a narrow escape. If his nose had been set a little more to one side, or his ears had appeared in the place of his eyes, Bascom could have purchased a weed for his hat without delay. No; the child would live. There wasn't the least doubt of it; and any man or woman who said he wouldn't grow up to make the world thunder with SIR JOHN FALSTAFF. [THE origin of this famous character has been much discussed. Old chroniclers allege that Shakspeare had a personal motive for introducing Falstaff into his plays. They state that there was an original to the character, who, having incurred the Bard's displeasure, was in consequence thus devoted to an immortality of ridicule. But there is no good evidence to support such a theory. Sir John Fastolf, whom some have supposed to have suggested the character, died about a century before Shakspeare was born; and, moreover, he is introduced in his own proper name in the play of Henry VI. In the original draft of King Henry IV., Falstaff was called Sir John Oldcastle, but in compliance with the wishes of the descendants of a knight of that name, Shakspeare chose the now immortal name of Falstaff instead. In the Epilogue to the Second Part of Henry "For anything I know, Falstaff IV. the poet says: shall die of a sweat, unless he be already killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man."] ter throughout three plays, and exhibited him in every variety of situation; the figure is drawn so definitely and individually, that even to the mere reader it conveys the clear impression of personal acquaintance. Falstaff is the most agreeable and entertaining knave that ever was portrayed. "His contemptible qualities are not disguised: old, lecherous, and dissolute; corpulent beyond measure, and always intent upon cherishing his body with eating, drinking, and sleeping; constantly in debt, and anything but conscientious in his choice of means by which money is to be raised; a cowardly soldier, and a lying braggart; a flatterer of his friends before their face, and a satirist behind their backs; and yet we are never disgusted with him. We see that his tender care of himself is without any mixture of malice towards others; he will only not be disturbed in the pleasant repose of his sensuality, and this he obtains through the activity of his understanding. Always on the alert, and good-humored, ever ready to crack jokes on others, and to enter into those of which he is himself the subject, so that he justly boasts he is not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others, he is an admirable companion for youthful idleness and [In our treatment of this extract from Shak- TIRE. The Falstaff Letters, commencing on page 301, so admirably supplement Shakspeare's comic masterpiece (and as the book is very rare and costly) we have published them as addenda to Shakspeare's Falstaff.] Under a helpless exterior, he conceals an extremely acute mind; he has always at command some dexterous turn whenever any of his free jokes begin to give displeasure; he is shrewd in his distinctions between those whose favor he has to win and those over whom he may assume a familiar authority. He is so convinced that the part which he plays can only pass under "Falstaff," says Dr. Johnson, "unimita- the cloak of wit, that even when alone he is ted, unimitable Falstaff, how shall I describe never altogether serious, but gives the drolthee? Thou compound of sense and vice; of lest coloring to his love-intrigues, his intersense which may be admired but not es- course with others, and to his own sensual teemed; of vice which may be despised, but philosophy. Witness his inimitable solilohardly detested! Falstaff. . . is a thief and quies on honor, on the influence of wine on a glutton, a coward and a boaster, always bravery, his descriptions of the beggarly vagready to cheat the weak and prey upon the abonds whom he enlisted, of Justice Shallow, poor; to terrify the timorous and insult the &c. Falstaff has about him a whole court of defenceless. At once obsequious and malig- amusing caricatures, who by turns make their nant, he satirizes in their absence those whom appearance, without ever throwing him into he lives by flattering . . . Yet the man thus the shade. The adventure, in which the corrupt, thus despicable, makes himself neces- Prince, under the disguise of a robber, comsary to the Prince that despises him, by the pels him to give up the spoil which he had most pleasing of all qualities, perpetual gai-just taken; the scene where the two act the ety, by an unfailing power of exciting laughter, which is the more freely indulged, as his wit is not of the splendid or ambitious kind, but consists in easy scapes and sallies of levity, which make sport, but raise no envy." part of the King and the Prince; Falstaff's behaviour in the field, his mode of raising recruits, his patronage of Justice Shallow, which afterwards takes such an unfortunate turn-all this forms a series of characteristic Schlegel says: "Falstaff is the crown of scenes of the most original description, full Shakspeare's comic invention. He has, with- of pleasantry, and replete with nice and inout exhausting himself, continued this charac-genious observation, such as could only find |