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PETERSON'S MAGAZlNE.

Herman Winthrop was a physician, a widower, and the father of two children. His quiet home had been under the charge ofa housekeeper rather more than a year, and as the evenings began to lengthen, and the winter winds sounded their premonitory notes through the leafless branches, he began more sensibly to miss the comforts and endearments of an unbroken home circle; and to think seriously of filling the vacant seat by his hearth-stone.

The doctor, spite of the advice of his elders in the profession, had married young, and as a consequence, found himself at thirty with a small family upon liis hands, and an income somewhat narrower and more precarious thon he could have desired. Still he was a handsome man, a great favorite among the ladies, and had possessed an excellent professional reputation. Under these circumstances ambition whispered that it would be very possible for him to contract a brilliant alliance; to carry off some dashing heiress, whose solid charms should allay his pecuniary vexations; while her beauty, her wit, and her style should make him the envy of half the town. To do the doctor justice, he did not draw on his imagination for all these details; they were suggested to him ready-made, in the person of Miss Minerva Hall, a lady whose apparent age was five or six and twenty.

On the other hand, he knew a little cottage just out of town, embowered amid roses and honeysuckles and clumps of evergreen, where dwelt, in the retirement of domestic peace and tranquillity, the solace and joy of a widowed mother, aud the pet and idol of the small circle of cultivated and warm-hearted people with whom she moved—sweet Annie Huntington.

Annie was gentle and fair-haired; she had none of the golden graces or subtle fascinations of her town rival; but she possessed what was better, a refined and educated mind; an amiable disposition, and a warm, loving heart.

The doctor's first wife had been a woman of this stamp; quiet and domestic in her tastes; gentle and affectionate in disposition; and the doctor had some rather distinct impressions that these same qualities had had much to do with the happiness of these few years of married life. He was a domestic man; he loved his home, and home enjoyments, and home endearments; yet, nevertheless, Amy had come to him a portionless bride, and the consequence was, he was in debt now, and harassed daily for funds.

One dreary November evening, the doctor came home from a round of most vexatious professional calls to find tea not ready, the housekeeper cross, the children in tears. Before the cloth was scarce removed, the children were sent to bed for some trivial misdemeanor, and shortly afterward, the housekeeper, irritated at some sharp remark by the doctor, slammed the door behind her and retired to her own room.

Thus left alone to his own meditations, the doctor fell very naturally to soliloquizing, and his soliloquy took very much the tone of the dismal rain which beat continually against the windows.

"What a miserable life this to lead! It will be the ruin of me and my children soon, that is certain. But how to mend it? The truth of the matter is, I ought to marry a fortune. I'm bothered to death, day by day with duns; there's the grocer's bill hasn't been paid these six months; and the butcher's bill is about due; and the interest of the mortgage on this house must be paid next month. To be sure with the right kind of management all these things could be straightened out in the course of time; but a housekeeper at the head of internal affairs isn't like a good wife, I've seen that; neither, I have a slight suspicion, are all women like Amy, poor soul; she was a good wife to me; but then I oughtn't to have married her when I did; why couldn't I have waited awhile, and not have plunged myself headlong into—I know not what.