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AN ANCIENT CITY.

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Built a Half Century Before the Landing of the Pilgrims.

[Special Correspondence of The American.]

ST. AUGUSTINE, FLA., September 10. ---- Coming to
this ancient city from Jacksonville, I was glad to
find it abandoned by tourists and the fashinable
throngs of birds of passage who, in brilliant plumage,
make the gray old town during the brief winter
season ring with merriment and festivity. The sea
wall is built of coquina, capped with slabs of granite,
and extends from Fort Marion nearly a mile to the
government barracks. What object the government
could have had in making such an outly of capital
and labor to improve a seaport which never has and
probably never will be of any commercial importance
is past finding out. No large steamers ever
cross the bar, and only an occasional coasting
schooner is seen in the harbor. Yet the sea wall is
a good thing in its way, and is one of the principal
for two to walk abreat, it is a favorite promenade
during the winter evenings fot the thousands of
fashionable pleasure seekers who for a brief season
carry the town by storm. Even in summer occasional
loiterers may be seen any moonlight night
loiterers oft with swarthy cheecks and piercing black
eyes- Minorcans, whose ancestors came from beyond
the seas. In 1767 fifteen hundere Greeks,
Italians, and Minorcans were brought over by a
wealthy Scotchman, Dr. Turnbull, and were employed
on his indigo plantations, near New Smyrna.
Nine years after, their number bring reduced by
sickness and hardships to about six hundred, they
abandoned New Smyrna in a body and came to St.
Augustine, where their descendants still live and
form a very interesting part of the population.
Some of the girls are quite pretty, but their beauty
soon fades, and they become wrinkled and ugly
at an age when American women are in their prime.

The streets are all very narrow, most of them
being but twelve feet in width, the overhanging
balconies nearly meeting in places, which was
doubtless a great convenience to the old Spanish
residents, who could chat and shake hands with
their neighbors across the way, or stab them with
equaly facility should circumstances justify such a
proceeding. A hundred years or so ago horses or
vehicles were not allowed inside the city gates. The
gradens are well stocked with a great variety of
tropical fruits, including lemons, limes, oranges,
guavue, figs, bananas, olives, citrons and pomegranates.
The date palm grows thriftily, but produces
no fruit. Most of the public edifices and
many of the private dwellings are built of coquina
a unique conglomorate of fine shells and sand,
found in large quantities on Anastasia island, at the
entrance of the harbor.

The ancient fortress of San Marco (known since
the change of flags as Fort Marion) deserves more
than a passing notice. It was constructed by slave
and convict labor, and was a hundred years in
building. It was completed in 1756. Its castellated
battlements, its formidable bastions, with their
frowning guns; its lofty and imposing sally-port,
surrounded by the royal Spanish arms; its moat,
its draw-bridge, its commanding lookout tower, and
its massive moss-grown walls, all protray its
antiquity. Within its walls are gloomy vaults and
dungeons. A subterranean passage is said to connect
the fort with a neighboring covent. Ancient,
partially dismantled, and for all purposes of defence
abandoned forever, it still furnishes food for
fancy and reflection.

A hundred years in building! How many hopeless
captuves from across the sea grew gray in its
constuction, and with dying eyes gazed upward at
the massive, uninighed walls on which succeeding
generations should toll and sicken and die as they
had done? A hundred hopeless years dragged their
slow length over the interless earth before the
great work was finished. The architects who had
devised its construction were dead; those who had
laid its foundations were forgotten, and even the
necessity for such an undertaking had well-nigh
passed away ere the last stone was laid
and the labor of a century completed.

Although at present but a show town and city of
boarding-houses, St. Augustine has been the theatre
of many important historical events, and the scene
of numerous wars, sieges and massacres. Founded
by the Spaniards in 1765, it was a place of note and
importance when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth,
more than half a century afterwards. Its narrow
streets were filled with life and acticity, and the
population within the contines of its walls lived and
died, and bought and sold, for two hundred years
before the Declaration of Independence. The old
cathedral, with its chime of rusty bells, and the
plaza in which the remains of the spanish market-house
are still to be seen, form interesting features
of the quaint little city, and, taken as a whole, there
is nothing to compare with it in the United States.

Rambler.

Rev. Charles Brooks, father of the
State normal schools in America, was
asked by a teacher this question: " What
shall I teach my pupils?' He answered,
Teach them thoroughly these five
things: To live religiously; to think
comprehensively; to reckon methematically;
to converse fluently; and to write
grammtically. If you successfully
teach them these five things, you will
nobly have done your duty to your pupils,
to their parents, to your country,
and to yourself.

THE CHRISTMAS BABY.

BY WILL CARLETON, AUTHOR OF "FARM BALLADS."

"Tha' rt welcome. little bonny bird,
But shouldn't.'ha, come just when tha' did:
Teimes are bad."

- Old English Ballad.

Hoot! ye little rascal! ye come it on me this way,
Crowdin' yerself amongst us this blusterin' winter's day,
Knowin' that we already have three of ye, 'an seven,
An' tryin' to make yerself out a Christmas present 'o
Heaven?

Ten of ye have we know, Sir, for this world to abuse;
An' Bobbies he have no waistcoat, an' Nellie she have no
shoes,
An' Sammie he have no shirt, Sir (I tell it to his shame),
An' the one that was just before ye we ain't had time to
name!

An' all o' the banks be smashin', an' on us poor folk fall;
An' Boss he whittles the wages when work's to be had
at all;
An' all of us wonders at mornin' as what we shall eat at
night;
An' but for your father an' Sandy a-findin' somewhat
to do,
An' but for the preacher's woman, who often helps us
through,
An' but for your poor dear mother a-doin' twice her part,
Ye'd a seen us all in heaven afore ye was ready to start!

An' now ye have, ye rascal! so healthy an' fat an' sound,
A-weighin' I'll wager a dollar, the full of a dozen pound!
With yer mother's eyes a-flashin' yer father's flesh an'
build,
An' a good big mouth an' stomach all ready for to be
filled!

No, no! don't cry, may baby! hush up, my pretty one!
Don't get my chaff in your eye, boy - I only was just in fun.
Ye'll like us when he know us, although we're cur'us
folks;
But we don't get much victual, an' half our livin' is jokes!

Why, boy, did ye take me in earnest? come, sit upon my
knee:
I'll tell ye a secret, youngster- I'll name ye after me.
Ye shall have all yer brothers an' sisters with ye to play,
An' ye shall have yer carriage an' ride out every day?

Why' boy, do ye think ye'll suffer? I'm gettin' a trifle old,
But it'll be many years yet before I lose my hold;
An' if I should fall on the road, boy, still, them's yer
brothers, there,
An, not a rogue of them would see ye harmed a hair!

Say! when you come from heaven, my little namesake
dear,
Did ye see, 'mongst the little girls there, a face like this
one here?
That was yer little sister- she died a year ago,
An' all of us cried like babies when they laid her under the snow!

Hang it! if all the rich men I ever see or knew
Came here with all their traps, boy an' offered 'em for
you,
I'd show 'em to the door, Sir, so quick they'd think it
odd,
Before I'd sell my Christmas gift from God!

God often afflicts his people to bring
them nearer and keep them nearer to
Himself, to make earth less attractive
and heaven more desirable.

The Bride's Home-Coming.

We live in dead men's houses. -Hawthorne.

"Who planned that stone seat by the old mossed
door,
Facing the daisy-starred meadow?"
"A head that was white as the winter hoar,
When it went down the Valley of Shadow."

"Who planted yon rose tree, heavy with snow
Of odorous bud and blossom?"
"Fair hands that were folded long years ago
Over a snow-cold bosom."

"Who trod in the path past the old oak tree,
Down to the sweet-voiced river?"
"Feet that now rest by the jasper sea,
In the peace of God's Forever."

"Who drank at the bucket that hangs from yon
sweep,
Rusty and musty and broken?"
"Lips that the rosed and the violets keep
Locked in a dream unspoken."

"Who made the sweet song you are humming so
low,
With your eyes strayed down in the forest?"
"One that was sepulchred ages ago,
Singing out his heartache when sorest."

"Who fashioned the hearthstone, where, sitting to-
night,
We shall taste our love's ripened completeness?"
"One whose long story of bale and of blight
Would posion the new home's sweetness."

"Oh. my husband! I am too young, too young
To dwell where such death-damp fingers!"
"Darling, all chambers of life are hung
With tapestry wrought by dead fingers."

"We tread in the path of by-gone years,
"Mid ghosts of the dead generations;
Life is sweet with their songs and salt with their tears,
And rich with their souls' libations.

"But love, sweetest wife, is evermore new!
A child to the Greeks, 'mid immortals,
A child is he still and forever! With you
He enters to-day through these portals.

"He enters to-day, and he goes out no more
Till we through the gloom and the glory
Pass on to the realms of the 'gone before,'
And tell them our own sweet story."

New York Sun.

WHY MEN NEED WIVES. --- It is not to
sweep the house, makes the bed, darn the
socks and cook the meals, that the man
chiefly wants a wife. If this is all he needs
servants can do it more cheaply than a
wife. If this is all, when a young man
calls to see a lady send him into the pantry
to taste the bread and cakes she has made,
send him to inspect the needle-work and
bad-making, or put a broom into her
hands and send him to witness its use.
Such things are important, and the wise
young man will look after them. But
what the true man wants is a wife's companionship,
sympathy, and love. A man is
sometimes overtaken by misfortunes,
he meets failures and defeat, trials and temptations
beset him; and he needs some one
to stand by him and sympathise. All
through life, through storm and sunshine,
through conflict and victory, through adverse
and favoring winds, man needs a
woman's love. His heart yearns for it. A
sister or a mother's love will hardly supply
the need.

We never know wot's hidden in
each other's hearts; and if we had glass
winders there we'd need to keep the
shetters up some on us."

Martin Cbuzzlewit