Celia's Moth.

been a sailor and a little of every thing else before becoming a settler in Buenos Ayres , where lie made considerable money in sheep , which he afterwards lost in speculation . Shortly after his marriage , the fancy took him to return to his native

town , which he accordingly did , richer than when he left it by a wife and a fortune . But he did not retain either very long . The dark-eyed Peruvian pined and drooped in that uncongenial air ; and , before the village folk wore tired of

gossiping about her outlandish garb and ways , one bleak November day they were bidden to a hushed assembly , where " the foreign woman" lay , rigid enough now , her outlandish garb exchanged fur colourless grave-clothes ; then the blackfrozen sods

, of the little New-England cemetery closed over the stranger from the far-away land of the vine and the palm , and there was nothing left to toll of her save that mound and a motherless little boy . Captain Trent followed his wife before

many years , but not until he had succeeded in making ducks and drakes of his recentl y acquired money by rash speculation , and the undertaking of New-England farming on a South American scale , with the result to be expected from more zeal than

discretion . That accomplished—concluding , perhaps , that he had about exhausted this world—he betook himself to another , leaving Eory with the wreck of his property—just enough , as Celia had said , to let him dawdle along through life . Boy and

property were confided to the care of the captain ' s half-brother , Jacob Wetherell , who was to give the lad a home during his minorit y , send him to college—this being expressly stipulated b y the testator , with the exaggerated ideas of the advantages of that institution

peculiar to those who have not shared them—and be altogether a lather to the fatherless boy . The provision of the will had been dul y earned out : Eory , grown up , had passed ins four years within the university walls , and left them the wiser

, no doubt , by all that experience of prank-pkying and authorit y-cheating which are among the ocnehts of a collegiate course . Otherwise " cannot be said that he had particularly languished himself . He had just fciairuated , and returned home at the age <* twenty-two , healthy , handsome , and ^ y , with his life all before him , and no '

apparent notion of what to do with it beyond smoking , idling , and making love , in season and out of season , to his cousin Celia WothorolL As for this last pastime , no one , seeing Celia , would be disposed to blame him .

She was the type we all know in New England , and shall hardly meet with out of it : a mixture of fun and gravity , sentiment and shrewdness ; so pretty it seemed that she must be good for nothing , and so capable one felt that she ought to be ugly ;

kind , keen , and clever ; fresh and sweet as an opening brier-rose , with all the rose ' s bloom , and some of its thorns—as luckless Eory could testify . Occupied herself from morning till night , she looked with extreme disfavour on his purposeless existence , as

she regarded it . But then , as it happened , he had one purpose , and that was to make her his wife ; so , when she said to-night , with such uncompromising plainness , that she would never marry a shirk , the words went straight home as no others could have

done . He could not get rid of them ; the mill-current seemed to ripple to their tuno ; they formed the basis both of the thoughts , of anger and mortification , that ran through his mind while he sat on the stone

thinkmsit out , and of the plan that had taken shape before he returned home to lot himself in at the pantry-window , unheard by anybody but Celia , who , though she would not sit up for folk that stayed out late courting , nevertheless did not sleep till she had heard said folk come in .

the next morning at breakfast Eory astonished his uncle Jacob by inquiring if there were not some books of his father ' s on South America somewhere about the house . " I guess so , " answered the old farmer , intent on the carving of a pink-and-white

ham , artistically picked out with blackpepper spots . " But what do you want of South-American books , hey , Eory ?" " Only because I ' m gohig there myself , " was Eory ' s startling answer . Celia improvidoiitly dropped five large

lumps of sugar one after another into her father ' s coffee-cup , and the old man himself left the knife quivering half-way in the ham .

" I ou going to South America ! " lie repeated , wrinkling up his eyebrows , the better to stare at Eory . " Why , bless the boy . he ain't waked up yet ! "