94 



KIDD'S LONDON JOURNAL. 



thousand years. If the years divisible by 

 four thousand were also reckoned at three 

 hundred and sixty-five days each, the error 

 would not be a day in a hundred thousand 

 years. 



It is thus that we come by our odd day 

 this year ; and now let us consider what we 

 should or can make of it. Now tins ( ' odd 

 day," this twenty-ninth of February, which 

 we shall not have again until we are four 

 years older, is what we may call " a day 

 found ; " and it so happens that very much 

 of the good or bad sense of mankind is deter- 

 mined by the use which they make of what 

 is found in this way, or otherwise comes in 

 addition to what they calculated or expected. 

 "Lightly come, lightly gone," is the fool's 

 maxim in those cases, and from their acting 

 on this maxim good luck is the ruin of thou- 

 sands. We often find that a prize in the 

 lottery, an unexpected legacy, or anything 

 else which comes without having been looked 

 for, turns a frugal man into a profligate idler; 

 and as time is really our most valuable pos- 

 session, we should be especially careful that 

 this additional day shall not be perverted 

 into a waste of time. Still it is a particular 

 day, and we have a right to make a peculiar 

 use of it. Now we are not aware that any 

 better use can be made of it than the follow- 

 ing : — Think over the years that have elapsed 

 since last odd day, consider what failure or 

 success has been in them, and what have 

 been the causes of the one or the other. 

 Then, when this has been done calmly and 

 seriously, with that thorough and searching 

 scrutiny which every one may and should 

 give to his own conduct, without any refer- 

 ence to the rest of mankind, consider by 

 what means failure is to be avoided, and 

 success to be insured, during the four years 

 which must elapse before we have another 

 odd day; 



If in tfois maimer the odd day could be 

 made a general settling day with every one 

 in respect of his own conduct and conscience, 

 it might be made the most valuable day in 

 all the four years, of which it is the summing 

 up ; and if the settlement is made with any- 

 thing like wisdom, it is astonishing how 

 much may be learned with no apparent 

 labor and trouble ; and thus the " odd day " 

 may be most profitably employed in setting 

 the whole course of our lives " even." 



A Speculation — connected with Natural 

 History. — The remains of some flying reptiles, 

 one of them supposed to have measured more 

 than sixteen feet from tip to tip of its out- 

 stretched wings, have been found in the white 

 chalk of Kent. — Were these, suggests one's ima- 

 gination, blown out to sea and drowned, so that 

 their bones sank to the bottom and were pre- 

 served in the white mud ? If not, whence came 

 they ? 



KATE COLEMAN. 



An arrant piece of mischief was that Kitty 

 Coleman, with her winsome ways and wicked 

 little heart ! Those large bewildering eyes ! 

 how they poured out their strange eloquence, 

 looking as innocent all the while as though 

 they had peered from their amber -fringed 

 curtains quite by mistake, or only to join in 

 a quadrille with the sunlight! And then 

 those warm, ripe lips, the veritable 

 " Rosy bed 

 That a bee would choose to dream in :" 

 that is, a well-bred bee, which cared to 

 pillow his head on pearls white as snow on 

 the heaven-side of our earthly atmosphere, 

 and sip the honey of Hybla from the balmy 

 air fanning his slumbers. 



And so wild — unmanageable was she ! Oh ! 

 it was shocking to proper people ! Why, she 

 actually laughed aloud — Kitty Coleman did ! 

 I say Kitty, because in her hours of frolick- 

 ing, she was very like a juvenile puss, par- 

 ticularly given to fun-loving ; and, moreover, 

 because everybody called her Kitty, but aunt 

 Martha. She was a well-bred woman, who 

 disapproved of loud laughing, romping, and 

 nicknaming, as she did of other crimes ; so 

 she always said Miss Catherine. She thought, 

 too, that Miss Catherine's hair — those long, 

 golden locks, like rays of floating sunshine 

 wandering about her shoulders — should be 

 gathered up into a comb ; and once the little 

 lady was so obliging as to make trial of the 

 scheme ; but, at the first bound she made 

 after Rover, the burnished cloud broke from 

 its ignoble bondage, and the little silver 

 comb nestled down in the long grass for 

 evermore. 



Kitty was a sad romp. It is a hard thing 

 to say of one we all loved so well, but aunt 

 Martha said it, and shook her head, and 

 sighed the while ; and the squire, aunt 

 Martha's brother, said it, and spread open 

 his arms for his pet to spring into ; and 

 careful old ladies said it, and said, too, what 

 a pity it is that young ladies now-a -days 

 would have no more regard for propriety ! 

 and even Enoch Short, the great phrenologist, 

 buried his bony fingers in those dainty locks, 

 that none but a phrenologist had a right to 

 touch, and waiting only for the long, silvery 

 laugh that interrupted his scientific researches , 

 to subside, declared that her organ of mirth- 

 fulness was very strikingly developed. It 

 was then a matter past controversy ; and, of 

 course, Kitty was expected to do what 

 nobody else could do, and say what nobody 

 else had a right to say ; and the sin of all 

 was chargeable to a strange idiosyncrasy, a 

 peculiar conformation of the mind, or rather 

 brain, over which she had no control ; and 

 so Kitty was forgiven, forgiven by all but — 

 we had a story to tell. 



