the old, the observance of children for their parents, the severities of home rule, the long practice and self-restraint necessary to success and full enjoyment even of the favorite recreation, — all imply training more or less painful and laborious; a never-relaxed vigilance in the teacher — docility, patience, and self-command in the learner. Our survey tends to the conclusion that at no time have manners been so left to form themselves as now. We hear of people forgetting their manners, but some of our youth stand in danger of never learning them. While so great a point is made of thoroughness in all other learning, the mere ABC grounding of manners threatens to be left untaught. It seems supposed that, given so much intellectual culture, boys and girls, by the mere process of growing old, turn into polite, considerate men and women. We do not believe it. Many arts and sciences are more easily acquired late in life than a good manner. If people are to behave well, they must be early taught to behave — a practice that demands unceasing sacrifices of minute personal liking to the general pleasure and convenience.
Lately hints have been thrown out that in certain high circles high breeding is going out of vogue. We do not fly at such high game, especially as culture of mind is there alleged to be as much neglected as refinement of manner. It is the classes with whom thoroughness of knowledge is felt of such supreme importance, who need to be sometimes reminded that, in intercourse with his fellows, it is, after all, manners that make the man.
WILL O' THE MILL.
THE PLAIN AND THE STARS.
The mill where Will lived with his adopted parents stood in a falling valley between pine woods and great mountains. Above, hill after hill, soared upwards until they soared out of the depth of the hardiest timber, and stood naked against the sky. Some way up, a long grey village lay like a seam or a ray of vapor on a wooded hillside; and when the wind was favorable, the sound of the church bells would drop down, thin and silvery, to Will. Below, the valley grew ever steeper and steeper, and at the same time widened out on either hand; and from an eminence beside the mill it was possible to see its whole length and away beyond it over a wide plain, where the river turned and shone, and moved on from city to city on its voyage towards the sea. It chanced that over this valley there lay a pass into a neighboring kingdom; so that, quiet and rural as it was, the road that ran along beside the river was a high thoroughfare between two splendid and powerful societies. All through the summer, travelling carriages came crawling up, or went plunging briskly downwards past the mill; and as it happened that the other side was very much easier of ascent, the path was not much frequented, except by people going in one direction; and of all the carriages that Will saw go by, five-sixths were plunging briskly downwards and only one-sixth crawling up. Much more was this the case with foot-passengers. All the light-footed tourists, all the pedlars laden with strange wares, were tending downward like the river that accompanied their path. Nor was this all; for when Will was yet a child a disastrous war arose over a great part of the world. The newspapers were full of defeats and victories, the earth rang with cavalry hoofs, and often for days together and for miles around the coil of battle terrified good people from their labors in the field. Of all this, nothing was heard for a long time in the valley; but at last one of the commanders pushed an army over the pass by forced marches, and for three days horse and foot, cannon and tumbril, drum and standard, kept pouring downward past the mill. All day the child stood and watched them on their passage — the rhythmical stride, the pale, unshaven faces tanned about the eyes, the discolored regimentals and the tattered flags, filled him with a sense of weariness, pity, and wonder; and all night long, after he was in bed, he could hear the cannon pounding and the feet trampling, and the great armament sweeping onward and downward past the mill. No one in the valley ever heard the fate of the expedition, for they lay out of the way of gossip in those troublous times; but Will saw one thing plainly, that not a man returned. Whither had they all gone? Whither went all the tourists and pedlars with strange wares? whither all the brisk barouches with servants in the dicky? whither the water of the stream, ever coursing downward and ever renewed from above? Even the wind blew oftener down the valley, and carried the dead leaves along with it in the fall. It seemed like a great conspiracy of things animate and inanimate; they
