" "Of course thee dost, John!" said blithe little Mrs. Makepeace.

Oh, yes! 'a Merrie Christmas,' With blithest song and smile, Bright with the thought of Him who dwelt On earth a little while, That we might dwell for ever Where never falls a tear:

Two minutes after Solon had looked up in some astonishment from his dusty, over-piled desk, they were arrayed as North and South in a combat of blithest raillery.

We know him, we love him, we always remember him as the year comes round, and the blithest song our brazen tongues utter is a Christmas carol to the Father of 'The Chimes!'

In olden days "holy fathers" could wear horse-hair shirts and scarify their epidermis with a finer cruelty than their modern successors, and they could, after all that, make the blithest songs, sing the merriest melodies, and quaff the oldest port with an air of jocund conscientiousness, making one slyly like them, however much inclined to dispute the correctness of their theology.

and Scrooge said often afterwards, that, of all the blithe sounds he had ever heard, those were the blithest in his ears.

Choose ye the softly-breathing-flute, The mellow horn, the loving lute; The viol you must not forget, And take the sprightly flageolet And grave bassoon; choose too the fife, Whose warblings in the tuneful strife, Mingling in mystery with the words, May seem like notes of blithest birds.

" VIII The years Michelangelo spent in the Casa Medici were probably the blithest and most joyous of his lifetime.

My Blouzelinda is the blithest lass, Than primrose sweeter, or the clover-grass.

I. For a long time blithe and fragile Miss Eunice, demure, correct in deportment, and yet not wholly without enthusiasm, thought that day the unluckiest in her life on which she first took into her hands that unobtrusive yet dramatic book, "Miss Crofutt's Missionary Labors in the English Prisons.

Long, long may stand, Not touched by Time, the Rectory blithe; No grudging churl dispute his Tithe; At Easter be the offerings due

The party, of which she was the blithest,ah, how she loved sailing!stepped on board at six.

As for the wheel, the situation was not nearly so blithe as she had represented to Rey.

Blithe, lifting, loving, the message had come to her from the Presence.

Happily, one of the blithest, manliest, completest spirits of our times was a matchless writer of lettersStevenson.

Mr. Browning was the readiest, the blithest, and the most forcible of talkers, and when he dealt in criticism the edge of his sword was mercilessly whetted against pretension and vanity.

He was a cheerful fellow in his sorry business, blithe as an old stager of an undertaker at a first-class funeral.

At hand a nightingale carolled as though an exiled prince were the blithest spectacle the moon knew.

Blithe Baldwin, by Ethel Hueston.

" Bride and bridegroom had one of the blithest, happiest journeys ever made.

Tom is the gayest, the blithest Creature!

From that spot I once saw three artists sketching it at the same timeWilliam Westall (who has engraved it among his admirable views of Keswick,) Glover, and Edward Nash, my dear, kind-hearted friend and fellow-traveller, whose death has darkened some of the blithest recollections of my latter life.

I remember she was surprised on one of my home-comings, when Miss Marryat noted "cheerfulness" as a want in my character, for at home I was ever the blithest of children, despite my love of solitude; but away, there was always an aching for home, and the stern religion cast somewhat of a shadow over me, though, strangely enough, hell never came into my dreamings except in the interesting shape it took in "Paradise Lost."

He sings his blithest and his best; 1800.

Through all the mysteries of May, Initiate, I take my way Sure as the blithest lark or linnet To touch the pulsing soul within it