A MIDNIGHT VISITOR.

I HAD been grinding until late, and to rest my mind before retiring for the night, had taken up the "Verses from the Advocate." I could hear the wind blowing round the corner of the house, the snow beating against the window-panes, and the whistle of the draught in the chimney. In such a night and at that late hour I did not expect any one would drop in. I was therefore rather surprised when I heard a knock at my door, and saw a stranger come in. His appearance was certainly remarkable. He was young, but dressed in a very old fashion. Buff boots and black-velvet knickerbockers adorned his legs, while a blue coat and brilliant red waistcoat covered the upper part of his body. He took off his large slouch hat as he came in, and showed a head of brown ringlets. Thinking he had been taking part in some theatricals, and had wandered by mistake into my room, I offered him a chair and my jar of Lone Jack. He dipped his thumb and forefinger into the tobacco and proceeded to take it as snuff.

"For such an offence I once received a public admonition," remarked my visitor in a casual way. I ventured to express my surprise.

"The laws of Harvard College," he replied, "forbid the use of tobacco, strong beer, wine, or any other inebriating drink."

Making a mental note of this new classification of tobacco as an "inebriating drink," I asked him when he graduated.

"I never graduated. I belong to the class of '77."

"What, the class of 1877?" I inquired.

He stared at me in a vacant way, and, as he drew from the leg of one of his high boots a suspicious-looking bottle, he muttered, "Sixteen hundred and seventy seven."

"Yes," he went on, after a long pull at the bottle, "it is two hundred years ago to-night since the Faculty took action on my case and expelled me from the college. I left, never to return again alive." He paused, and I tried to regain my self-possession. But he kept on without waiting for me to join in the conversation. "How often have I been summoned before the President for wearing London styles, fined for having on my back what the Overseers called ruffian-like and new-fangled fashions! How I used to spend my income in paying for the prayers I cut! Beware of absence from the house of prayer! Have you been often absent?" he inquired in a paternal way.

I explained to him that we were allowed seventy-two cuts and I had taken thirty-six. "For omitting to attend at morning and evening prayers for thirteen days I was suspended from my seniority. I am glad you do not indulge in long and powdered hair," he continued. "They gave me a private because I refused to cut off these shining locks." He was evidently trying to impress upon me that he was one of the "nuts" of '77.

I was on the point of asking him how they settled the class election, when something on my mantel-piece caught his eye. It was a photograph of one of the opera-troupe that have lately drawn such crowded houses at the Globe.

"Ha, young Freshman! avoid the company or familiar acquaintance of persons ungirt or of dissolute life."

This was too much for me. To be taken for a Freshman! I could not stand it. I tried to rise to show him gracefully but firmly to the door. He seized me by the coat-collar and shook me until I thought this spirit of 1677 would never let go.

I awoke. It was my chum returning from his nocturnal howl.

D.