It isn't every one who has a village green to write about. I have one, although I have not seen much of it for some years past. I am back again, now. In the language of the duke who went around with a motto about him, "I am here!" and I fancy I am about as happy a peasant of the vale as ever garnished a melodrama, although I have not as yet danced on my village green, as the melodramatic peasant usually does on his. It was the case when Rosina Meadows left home.

The time rolls by serenely now so serenely that I don't care what time it is, which is fortunate, because my watch is at present in the hands of those "men of New York who are called rioters." We met by chance, the usual way certainly not by appointment and I brought the interview to a close with all possible despatch. Assuring them that I wasn't Mr. Greeley, particularly, and that he had never boarded in the private family where I enjoy the comforts of a home, I tendered them my watch, and begged they would distribute it judiciously among the laboring classes, as I had seen the rioters styled in certain public prints.

Why should I loiter feverishly in Broadway, stabbing the hissing hot air with the splendid gold-headed cane that was presented to me by the citizens of Waukegan, Illinois, as a slight testimonial of their esteem? Why broil in my rooms? You said to me, Mrs. Gloverson, when I took possession of these rooms, that no matter how warm it might be, a breeze had a way of blowing into them, and that they were, withal, quite countryfied; but I am bound to say, Mrs. Gloverson, that there was nothing about them that ever reminded me, in the remotest degree, of daisies or new-mown hay. Thus, with sarcasm, do I smash the deceptive Gloverson.

Why stay in New York when I had a village green? I gave it up, the same as I would an intricate conundrum and, in short, I am here.

Do I miss the glare and crash of the imperial thoroughfare? The milkman, the fiery, untamed omnibus horses, the soda fountains, Central Park, and those things? Yes I do; and I can go on missing 'em for quite a spell, and enjoy it.

The village from which I write to you is small. It does not contain over forty houses, all told; but they are milk-white, with the greenest of blinds, and for the most part are shaded with beautiful elms and willows. To the right of us is a mountain to the left a lake. The village nestles between. Of course it does, I never read a novel in my life in which the villages didn't nestle. Villages invariably nestle. It is a kind of way they have.

We are away from the cars. The iron-horse, as my little sister aptly remarks in her composition On Nature, is never heard to shriek in our midst; and on the whole I am glad of it.

The villagers are kindly people. They are rather incoherent on the subject of the war, but not more so, perhaps, then are people elsewhere. One citizen, who used to sustain a good character, subscribed for the Weekly New York Herald a few months since, and went to studying the military maps in that well-known journal for the fireside. I need not inform you that his intellect now totters, and he has mortgaged his farm. In a literary point of view we are rather bloodthirsty. A pamphlet edition of the life of a cheerful being, who slaughtered his wife and child, and then finished himself, is having an extensive sale just now.

We know little of Honore de Balzac, and perhaps care less for Victor Hugo. M. Claes's grand search for the Absolute doesn't thrill us in the least; and Jean Valjean, gloomily picking his way through the sewers of Paris, with the spooney young man of the name of Marius upon his back, awakens no interest in our breasts. I say Jean Valjean picked his way gloomily, and I repeat it. No man, under these circumstances, could have skipped gayly. But this literary business, as the gentleman who married his colored chambermaid aptly observed, "is simply a matter of taste."

The store I must not forget the store. It is an object of great interest to me. I usually encounter there, on sunny afternoons, an old Revolutionary soldier. You may possibly have read about "Another Revolutionary Soldier gone," but this is one who hasn't gone, and, moreover, one who doesn't manifest the slightest intention of going. He distinctly remembers Washington, of course; they all do; but what I wish to call special attention to, is the fact that this Revolutionary soldier is one hundred years old, that his eyes are so good that he can read fine print without spectacles—he never used them, by the way and his mind is perfectly clear. He is a little shaky in one of his legs, but otherwise he is as active as most men of forty-five, and his general health is excellent. He uses no tobacco, but for the last twenty years he has drunk one glass of liquor every day no more, no less. He says he must have his tod. I had begun to have lurking suspicions about this Revolutionary soldier business, but here is an original Jacobs. But because a man can drink a glass of liquor a day, and live to be a hundred years old, my young readers must not infer that by drinking two glasses of liquor a day a man can live to be two hundred. "Which, I meanter say, it doesn't foller," as Joseph Gargery might observe.

This store, in which may constantly be found calico and nails, and fish, and tobacco in kegs, and snuff in bladders, is a venerable establishment. As long ago as 1814 it was an institution. The county troops, on their way to the defence of Portland, then menaced by British ships-of-war, were drawn up in front of this very store, and treated at the town's expense. Citizens will tell you how the clergyman refused to pray for the troops, because he considered the war an unholy one; and how a somewhat eccentric person, of dissolute habits, volunteered his services, stating that he once had an uncle who was a deacon, and he thought he could make a tolerable prayer, although it was rather out of his line; and how he prayed so long and absurdly that the Colonel ordered him under arrest, but that even while soldiers stood over him with gleaming bayonets, the reckless being sang a preposterous song about his grandmother's spotted calf, with its Ri-fol-lol-tiddery-i-do; after which he howled dismally.

And speaking of the store, reminds me of a little story. The author of "several successful comedies" has been among us, and the store was anxious to know who the stranger was. And therefore the store asked him.

"What do you follow, sir?" respectfully inquired the tradesman.

"I occasionally write for the stage, sir."

"Oh!" returned the tradesman, in a confused manner.

"He means," said an honest villager, with a desire to help the puzzled tradesman out, "he means that he writes the handbills for the stage drivers!"

I believe that story is new, although perhaps it is not of an uproariously mirthful character; but one hears stories at the store that are old enough, goodness knows stories which, no doubt, diverted Methuselah in the sunny days of his giddy and thoughtless boyhood.

There is an exciting scene at the store occasionally. Yesterday an athletic peasant, in a state of beer, smashed in a counter and emptied two tubs of butter on the floor. His father a white-haired old man, who was a little boy when the Revolutionary war closed, but who doesn't remember Washington much, came round in the evening and settled for the damages. "My son," he said, "has considerable originality." I will mention that this same son once told me that he could lick me with one arm tied behind him, and I was so thoroughly satisfied he could, that I told him he needn't mind going for a rope.

Sometimes I go a-visiting to a farmhouse, on which occasions the parlor is opened. The windows have been close-shut ever since the last visitor was there, and there is a dingy smell that I struggle as calmly as possible with, until I am led to the banquet of steaming hot biscuit and custard pie. If they would only let me sit in the dear old-fashioned kitchen, or on the door-stone if they knew how dismally the new black furniture looked but, never mind, I am not a reformer. No, I should rather think not.

Gloomy enough, this living on a farm, you perhaps say, in which case you are wrong. I can't exactly say that I pant to be an agriculturist, but I do know that in the main it is an independent, calmly happy sort of life. I can see how the prosperous farmer can go joyously a-field with the rise of the sun, and how his heart may swell with pride over bounteous harvests and sleek oxen. And it must be rather jolly for him on winter evenings to sit before the bright kitchen fire and watch his rosy boys and girls as they study out the charades in the weekly paper, and gradually find out why my first is something that grows in a garden, and my second is a fish.

On the green hillside over yonder there is a quivering of snowy drapery, and bright hair is flashing in the morning sunlight. It is recess, and the Seminary girls are running in the tall grass.

A goodly seminary to look at outside, certainly, although I am pained to learn, as I do on unprejudiced authority, that Mrs. Higgins, the Principal, is a tyrant, who seeks to crush the girls and trample upon them; but my sorrow is somewhat assuaged by learning that Skimmerhorn, the pianist, is perfectly splendid.

Looking at these girls reminds me that I, too, was once young and where are the friends of my youth? I have found one of 'em, certainly. I saw him ride in the circus the other day on a bareback horse, and even now his name stares at me from yonder board-fence, in green, and blue, and red, and yellow letters. Dashington, the youth with whom I used to read the able orations of Cicero, and who, as a declaimer on exhibition days, used to wipe the rest of us boys pretty handsomely out—well, Dashington is identified with the halibut and cod interest—drives a fish cart, in fact, from a certain town on the coast, back into the interior. Hurbertson, the utterly stupid boy the lunkhead, who never had his lesson he's about the ablest lawyer a sister State can boast. Mills is a newspaper man, and is just now editing a Major-General down South.

Singlinson, the sweet-voiced boy, whose face was always washed and who was real good, and who was never rude—he is in the penitentiary for putting his uncle's autograph to a financial document. Hawkins, the clergyman's son, is an actor, and Williamson, the good little boy who divided his bread and butter with the beggarman, is a failing merchant, and makes money by it. Tom Slink, who used to smoke short-sixes and get acquainted with the little circus boys, is popularly supposed to be the proprietor of a cheap gaming establishment in Boston, where the beautiful but uncertain prop is nightly tossed. Be sure, the Army is represented by many of the friends of my youth, the most of whom have given a good account of themselves. But Chalmerson hasn't done much. No, Chalmerson is rather of a failure. He plays on the guitar and sings love songs. Not that he is a bad man. A kinder-hearted creature never lived, and they say he hasn't yet got over crying for his little curly haired sister who died ever so long ago. But he knows nothing about business, politics, the world, and those things. He is dull at trade indeed, it is a common remark that "everybody cheats Chalmerson." He came to the party the other evening, and brought his guitar. They wouldn't have him for a tenor in the opera, certainly, for he is shaky in his upper notes; but if his simple melodies didn't gush straight from the heart, why were my trained eyes wet? And although some of the girls giggled, and some of the men seemed to pity him I could not help fancying that poor Chalmerson was nearer heaven than any of us all!