the mark than many a fine palace under the reformation in architecture; and so 

 the public will say a dozen years hence. 



How queer those women in the foreground of the picture look, with such a 

 mass of distending whalebone under their petticoats ! ' Jeffreys. 



THE STRAWBERRY SEEDLING. 



BY "EMILE TUE ELDEE," PHILADELPHIA. 



In the autumn of 1846, if memory serves me riglit, our clever '• Aunt 

 Charlotte" was at Paris, with her two youngest daughters, and while 

 boarding at pleasant quarters in the great French capital (and capital it 

 surely is in the eating department), she was daily served with delightful 

 strawberries for dessert ; the advanced season, no less than 

 the very fine flavor of the fruit, made them a great luxury, 

 and Aunt Charlotte expressed some surprise to her host, 

 inquiring, at the same time, if the strawberries were from 

 neighboi-ing greenhouses ? But being told that they grew 

 in tha open air, and were constant bearers, the idea imme- 

 diately suggested itself of preserving some of the seeds for 

 friends at home, and among these, a letter from Paris noti- 

 fied us that we should not be forgotten. Accordingly, our kind utilitarian Aunt crushed 

 some of the finest berries upon thick brown paper, and, after exposing them to dry in the 

 sun, carefully rolled up the paper, and placed it in one of her travelling trunks. 



During that winter, our friend returned to the United States, by way of England ; arriving 

 at New York, her next destination was their homestead at New Haven, and there Aunt 

 Charlotte took possession of her own furnished house, which had been rented for the term 

 of her absence. Among the first duties, she ordered her newly-hired servant woman (or, 

 as the good people of Connecticut sometimes call them — " helps" — probably because they 

 allow their employers to help themselves), was to unpack the trunks, and put the things into 

 the wardrobes and bureaus ; finding, as she performed this task, a roll of common brown 

 paper, she of course threw it into the fire, and, in another moment, the Paris Strawberry 

 seeds were so many useless grains of ashes. Thus seemed to perish all the good intentions 

 of our obliging Aunt Charlotte, who needed to be the cheerful and sensible Christian that 

 she is, in order to bear patiently the heedless act of her Irish " help." 



It was but a few weeks after this sad event when Aunt Charlotte came to visit us at 

 "Clover Hill," and related the ill-fortune that had befallen her brown paper of seeds, some 

 of whicl\. she had designed for us ; and as she finished the account of her disappointment, 

 the thought suddenly came to her, and she said : " I have that very identical trunk here ivith 

 me now, and 1 wonder if some of the strawberry-seeds may not have been rubbed off from the 

 paper, and remained at the bottom of the trunk!" 



She went to examine, and, accordingly, on very minute search in all the comers and 

 cracks, she returned ti'iumphantly to the sitting-room with three little specks upon the palm 

 of her hand, almost invisible to the naked eye, but which, she thought, inight be some of the 

 detached seeds. Handing them to me with a request that they should be tried, I went at 

 once in search of a small flower-pot, and, spite of laughing doubts, filled it with light soil, 

 and deposited the three grains of what seemed like just so much additional sand. 



More merriment than hope attended my planting, and various were the speculations sug- 

 gested, as from day to day I anxiously watched for the result of what others thought to be 

 a hopeless experiment. The dispositions display themselves on small as well as great occa- 



