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executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and sole mourner. even Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was an excellent man of business on the 5 very day of the funeral, and solemnized it with an undoubted bargain.

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Scrooge never painted out Old Marley's name. There it stood, years afterwards, above the warehouse door: Scrooge and Marley." The firm was known as Scrooge 10 and Marley. Sometimes people, new to the business, called Scrooge Scrooge, and sometimes Marley; but he answered to both names: it was all the same to him.

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, 15 clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his 20 eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dog-days; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.

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External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, nor wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he; no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose; no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to 30 have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him, in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, and Scrooge never did.

Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with glad35 some looks, "My dear Scrooge, how are you? when will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle; no children asked him what it was o'clock; no man or woman ever once, in all his life, inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the 10 blind-men's dogs appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways, and up courts; and then would wag their tails, as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"

But what did Scrooge care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance, was what the knowing ones called "nuts" to Scrooge.

LESSON CLV.-THE PILGRIM FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND.-
RUFUS CHOATE,

[Address before the N. E. Society, N. Y., Dec. 22, 1843.] We meet again, the children of the pilgrims, to remember our fathers. Away from the scenes with which the American portion of their history is associated, forever, and in all men's minds;-scenes so unadorned, yet clothed 5 to the moral eye with a charm above the sphere of taste:the uncrumbled rock,—the hill, from whose side those “delicate springs" are still gushing ;-the wide woods,—the sheltered harbor, the little islands that welcomed them, in their frozen garments, from the sea, and witnessed the rest and 10 worship of that Sabbath day before their landing-away from all these scenes,-without the limits of the fond old colony that keeps their graves,-without the limits of the New England which is their wider burial place, and fitter monument, in the heart of this chief city of the nation, inte 15 which the feeble band has grown, we meet again ;-to repeat their names, one by one, to retrace the lines of their character, to appreciate their virtues, to recount the course of their life, full of heroic deeds, varied by sharpest trials, varied by transcendent consequences; to 20 assert the directness of our descent from such an ancestry of goodness and greatness;-to erect, refresh, and -touch our spirits, by coming for an hour into their more immediate presence, such as they were in the days of their "human agony of glory."

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The two centuries which interpose to hide them from our eye, centuries so brilliant with progress, so crowded by incidents, so fertile in accumulations, dissolve, for the moment, as a curtain of cloud, and we are, once more, by their side. The grand and pathetic series of their story 30 unrolls itself around us, vivid as if with the life of yesterday. All the stages, all the agents of the process by which they and the extraordinary class they belonged to, were slowly formed from the general mind and character of England; the influence of the age of the reformation, with which the 35 whole Christian world was astir to its profoundest depths,

and outermost limits, but which was poured out unbounded and peculiar on them; that various persecution, prolonged through two hundred years, and twelve reigns, from the time of the preaching of Wickliffe to the accession of James 5 the First, from which they gathered sadly so many precious fruits; a larger measure of tenderness of conscience, the sense of duty, force of will, trust in God, the love of truth, and the spirit of liberty; the successive development and growth of opinions, and traits and determinations and 10 fortunes, by which they were advanced, from Protestants to Republicans, from Englishmen to Pilgrims, from Pilgrims to the founders of a free Church, and the fathers of a free people, in a new world; the retirement to Holland; the resolution to seek the sphere of their duties, and the 15 asylum of their rights, beyond the seas; the embarkation at Delft-Haven, that scene of interest unparalleled, on which a pencil of your own has just enabled us to look back with tears, and praise, and sympathy, and the fond pride of children; that scene of few and simple incidents; the setting 20 out of a handful of, not then, very famous persons, on a voyage, but which, as we gaze on it, begins to speak to you as with the voices and melodies of an immortal hymn which dilates and becomes idealized into the auspicious going forth of a colony, whose planting has changed the 25 history of the world ;-a noble colony of devout Christians -educated firm men, valiant soldiers, and honorable women; a colony, on the commencement of whose heroic enterprise, the selectest influences of religion seemed to be descending visibly; and beyond whose perilous path are 30 hung the rainbow and the western star of empire ;—the voyage of the "May-flower;" the landing; the slow winter's night of disease and famine, in which so many, the good, the beautiful, the brave, sank down and died, giving place, at last, to the spring-dawn of health and plenty; the 35 meeting with the old red race on the hill beyond the brook; the treaty of peace, unbroken for half a century; the organization of a republican government in the Mayflower's cabin ;-the planting of these kindred, coeval and auxiliary institutions, without which such a government, 40 could no more live than the uprooted tree can put forth leaf or flower,-institutions, to diffuse pure religion, good learning, austere morality, the practical arts of administration, labor, patience, obedience, "plain living and high thinking;" the securities of conservatism, and the germs

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of progress; the laying deep and sure, far down on the Rock of Ages, of the foundation-stones of that imperial structure whose dome now swells towards heaven; the timely death, at last, one after another, of the first generation of 5 the old Pilgrims, not unvisited by visions, as the final hour drew nigh, of the more apparent glory of the latter day; all these high, holy, and beautiful things, come thronging, fresh on all our memories, beneath the influence of their original hour. Such as we heard them from our mothers 10 lips; such as we read them, in the histories of kings, of religions, and of liberty; they gather themselves about us, familiar, certainly, but of an interest that can never die; an interest, intrinsical in themselves, yet heightened inexpressibly by their relations to that eventful future, into 15 which they have expanded, and through whose light they shine.

And yet, with all this procession of events and persons moving before us, and solicited this way and that by the innumerable trains of speculation and of feeling which 20 such a sight inspires, we can think of nothing, of nobody, -here and now, but the pilgrims, themselves. I cannot, and do not wish for a moment to forget that it is their festival, we have come to keep. It is their tabernacles we have come to build. It is not the reformation,-it is not 25 colonization; it is not ourselves, our present, or our future, -it is not political economy, or political philosophy, of which, to-day, you would have me say a word. We have a specific, single duty to perform. We would speak of certain valiant, good, peculiar men, our fathers! We 30 would wipe the dust from a few, old, plain, noble urms; we would shun husky disquisitions, irrelevant novelties and small display; would recall, rather the forms and the lineaments of the honored dead;-forms and features which the grave has not changed; over which the grave has no 35 power: robed in the vestments, all radiant with the hues of an assured immortality!

LESSON CLVI.-THE SETTLERS OF CONNECTICUT.—KENT.

The policy and the institutions of the settlers of Con. necticut, form and display their early national character. Their attention to public instruction, civil and religious, and their superintending and vigilant care of the morals 5 and habits of the people, were doubtless the principal

means, under Providence, of rendering the colony, in every period of its history, free, prosperous, and happy. It has been distinguished, above all other communities, for the orderly, respectful, and obliging deportment of the 5 inhabitants; for their intelligence, industry, and economy; for the purity and solidity of their moral character; for their religious profession and habits; for the dignity of their magistracy, and for unexampled order and decorum in the administration of justice. The discretion and pro10 bity which have attended the elections of their rulers, and the steadiness with which men in power, and deserving of the trust, have been kept in power, even by means of annual elections, and in spite of the temptations to change which such elections present, is a singular fact in the his15 tory of civil society, and most honorable to the character of the State.

The people of this State appear to have preserved their original manners and character more entire than most other people, and in a remarkable degree, considering their 20 enterprising and commercial disposition. Their young men have explored our infant settlements, and penetrated the western forests and solitudes; they have traversed foreign lands, and visited the shores and islands of every sea, either in search of new abodes, or as the heralds of 25 science and religion, or the messengers of business and commerce. But notwithstanding their migratory spirit, the sons of Connecticut have never lost their native attachments;-"their first, best country ever is at home."

This is partly owing to the force of natural sentiment; but more 30 especially, in their case, is it owing to the influence of early education, and to the pride, which local institutions of so simple and so efficient a character, naturally engender. And who indeed can resist the feelings which consecrate the place where he was born, the ground where his 35 ancestors sleep, the hills and haunts lightly trodden in the vehemence of youth, and, above all, where stand the classic halls, in which early friendships were formed, and the young mind was taught to expand and admire?

LESSON CLVII.-BENEFITS OF COLLEGIATE EDUCATION.-JOHN
SERGEANT.

An opinion has already been intimated that the benefits of early education, continued through the period which nature indicates as the time for training and discipline, are

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