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MR. HUBERT SMITH, the author of "Tent Life with Gypsies in Norway," has built himself a house near Laurvig, in that country, and married a gypsy of the name of Esmeralda, who is said to possess extraordinary musical talent.

as sight. Over the whole place broods a guilty silence, air of hopelessness and lifelessness, a blank unseeing are from the gaping windows, which makes one feel like e accomplice of some mysterious crime. The great warease, where the fire did its worst, is gutted from roof to sement! only a few blackened beams, like the ribs of a ROCHEFORT is contriving to get his Lanterne into eleton, bridge the space between the smouldering walls. France. Recently the Paris police had occasion to pay a verhead, the clear sky is blotted with creeping smoke; visit to a dress-maker, and on searching her premises they hile the ground is covered far and wide with half-confound a great variety of articles which they had not exmed bales, mounds of singed hemp, masses of iron plat-pected to find, and among them several bundles of the first g bent and twisted in every direction, charred planks and number of La Lanterne. Boke-blackened rafters floating in pools of water; and ound the chaos stand groups of curious spectators, not Disy or excited, but with a cool, scientific appreciation ich seems to say, "We have seen the like often before, at it is always worth seeing again."

It needs little imagination to transform the whole scene ato a great battle-field; the blackened ruins of the conested entrenchment standing grimly up in front-the barred bales and broken planking strewing the ground ike heaps of slain, amid which the strips of scarlet cloth how like trickling streams of blood - while the helmeted iremen who toil amid the chaos might well pass for the few survivors of the conquering army paying the last honors to their fallen brethren. And that nothing may be wanting to complete the tragedy, amid the thickest of the ruin lies a strange, formless heap, oozing out a thick, white, nauseous smoke a kind of unctuous, pitchy cinder, from which the most case-hardened veterans of the fire brigade avert their eyes in horror. There are five men missing this morning from the gang of the Tootchkoff Wharf, and this is all that is left of them!

Turning away in disgust, I suddenly come face to face with the Russian acquaintance mentioned at the opening of my story, who is surveying the dismal scene with the air of a connoisseur.

Well," remarks he, with a quiet smile (he is a man who would make a joke upon anything), "one advantage of all this is, that after such a destruction of hemp it will be simply impossible for men of moderate means to hang themselves for some time to come!"

So goes the march of events. A catastrophe unparalleled within the memory of man, the destruction of three millions' worth of property, half a dozen men killed by the cruellest of all deaths and all this is summed up in ten or twelve careless lines of print and the passing jest of a dilettante! But the counter-observation of an old fireman who is working near us sends me away somewhat comforted.

Poor fellows!" mutters the veteran, crossing himself, as he looks askance at the shapeless mass into which five living men have been melted down, "there's little enough left of them now, but God will know them when they come to Him."

FOREIGN NOTES.

A PRAYER-ROOM in private houses, fitted up ecclesiastically, is the latest fashionable novelty.

THE London Athenæum promises to give its readers next week some hitherto unpublished letters of Robert Burns.

MADAME PATTI is going to create a new part, having accepted the role of Virginia in M. Victor Masse's new opera of "Paul and Virginia.”

Two jewellers have been sent for from Paris to value the jewels and precious stones, etc., which are in the Pope's possession, and which he proposes to sell.

M. JULES VERNE, whose ingenious romances are just now very popular in Paris, is preparing his "Round the World in Eighty Days" for the Paris stage.

PRINCE BISMARCK, who takes baths daily at the Saltworks in Kissingen, has caused a request to be inserted in papers, desiring people meeting him in the public walks and drives not to salute him.

the

SERIOUS complaints are made by the church papers in Prussia of the decrease in the number of students of divin ity at the German Universities. Should there not be an early increase there is reason to fear that in a few years hence half the Protestant livings in the country will be unprovided with incumbents.

A MAN recently died in Manchester, England, in consequence of having swallowed a silver teaspoon, which had caused ulceration of the coats of the stomach, and perforation, and death. On being questioned in his last hour, he was not aware that he had eaten anything unusual. This is probably the neatest instance of absent-mindedness on record.

A little girl named

A STORY to this effect is current. Redmond, a daughter of one of the porters connected with Covent Garden, was about the stage some nights ago. While Marimon was on the stage, the young creature at the wings hummed after her the air that she was then singing. Faure, who happened to be about, heard, and was charmed with her execution. The following day her voice was tried. Faure was right. The juvenile songstress will be sent to Italy. Redmond is a capital name for a prima donna.

THE London Academy in a review of Charles Nordhoff's "Northern California, Oregon, and the Sandwich Islands" says: "The book before us is one of the simplest, and at the same time one of the pleasantest, narratives of travel we have met with for some time. The illustrations are numerous and excellent, and the descriptions so agreeably and unaffectedly given, that we can heartily recommend it to our readers. Mr. Nordhoff's work is reprinted by Sampson Low & Co. The American edition is published by the Harper Brothers.

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cial intercourse has been broken off by the French in a manner not to be misunderstood." One Frenchman was called on by a German, and he returned the visit by leaving at the house of the latter a card bearing the words, in writing, "Au revoir à Berlin."

A PARIS journalist is never so entertaining as when he is writing about England. The following absurd statement is made in a late number of the Vie Parisienne: "On Hyde Park Terrace is to be seen a house surmounted by a large glass case. The history of that case is curious enough, and shows how the English strictly observe the law. An Englishman, having married a widow with several children, declared that the latter would have the right to remain there so long as he himself was on the spot. The Englishman died, and the children forthwith had him embalmed and placed in the glass case in question. The family of the deceased brought an action for ejectment against the children of the widow he married, but failed, owing to the fact that the Englishman had not stipulated anything about his body being dead or alive, and as it still remains on the spot the children are the rightful possessors of the

house."

THE Geographical Society of Paris has, according to the Débats, received information confirming the rumor of

the death of M. Dournaux-Dupéré, who was conducting an expedition in the Sahara. The young traveller had advanced to Ghadamès by a route hitherto unknown to European explorers, and after a long stay there, he started for Ghât on April 12. When about five days' journey from Ghadamès, he was robbed and murdered, together with another French traveller, M. Joubert, by some deserters from the tribe of the Chamba. The news was brought by some Ghadameans, who had themselves been robbed of their camels, and had seen the bodies of the French travellers lying on the road, and was transmitted to the French governor of the district of Tripoli. The crime seems to have been pre-arranged, through the treachery of Si-Nahécur-ben-Ettahar, one of M. DournauxDupéré's guides, who has been handed over to the caïmacan of Ghadamès, and by him delivered up to the French consul-general at Tripoli, who will send him to Algiers. The murder appears to have been committed on April 17 or 18.

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THE Saturday Review is rather severe on "Young Brown." The critic says: "It is perhaps somewhat surprising that the sensational novel has not long since died a natural death. The improbability of incident, the unnatural dialogue, the ludicrous mistakes as to the practices of society, the utter ignorance of legal and other professional knowledge which mark the vulgar type of these productions have been repeatedly exposed. But, apart altogether from critical condemnation, it might have been supposed that the competition in absurdity and extravagance in which this school of fiction indulges would of itself lead in time to a process of exhaustion. The pace seemed to be too severe to last. Every new novel in this style was bound to be more thrilling than its predecessor, and there was consequently the prospect that a point must some day be reached beyond which fantastic nonsense could no further go. If this climax has not been reached before, it has been reached now. Whether Young Brown' is meant seriously or as a joke, it is certainly the wildest and most preposterous picture of life which has yet been produced. So much so, indeed, is this the case that we can hardly help thinking that its purpose must really be satirical; and as an enemy of the sensational novel, we are therefore disposed to welcome in the author of Young Brown' an ally in a new and unexpected form. The idea of holding up novelists to ridicule by caricaturing their wilder passages is not indeed wholly original. Readers of Thackeray will remember his admirable parodies on Bulwer, James, and other popular writers of fifteen years since, who had struck out special lines of their own; and Bret Harte's rougher American humor has lately been turned into a similar channel. But the authors whom these humorists have amused us by caricaturing were at least men of some real gifts and power. It has been reserved for the author of Young Brown' to apply his satirical faculty to the ordinary hack manufacturers of three-volume novels, and especially those who cater for the lovers of pure sensationalism. It is certainly the simplest explanation of his extraordinary plot that it is, from first to last, a burlesque of a well-known class of novels. No one seriously intending to write a story would select such incidents as are here strung together as the framework of the wildest romance. Seduction, bigamy, violence, the unpleasant juxtaposition of characters who are closely related, but without their knowledge these are too common elements in the ordinary sensational romance to strike one as extraordinary here but for the special touches of exaggeration which make this story the satire which we have assumed it to be. Peers doing the meanest and most felonious actions with the most courtly of airs, and gaining thereby the smallest possible advantages at the highest conceivable risks-these are staple articles of the stockin-trade of writers in three volumes. But caricature must go beyond this, and our author achieves his object by making his villainous nobles more rascally, and their criminalities meaner and more felonious, than any novelist has hitherto dared. He takes care also to keep as far as possi

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ble in the highest ranks of the peerage; and generally hi other improbabilities and blunders are a shade more gla ing and outrageous than those of the class of writers whom he has undertaken to outdo on their own ground."

SUMMER NOON.

'Tis midday, burning midday in mid June;
No breeze in all the realms of air hath birth,
And, stupefied, the scarcely breathing Noon
Lies heavy, heavy on the heat-drugged earth.
Cows seek the shed's, the birds the woodland's shade;
And lazily with every living thing

Goes the hot hour that parches bough and blade,
Save with the insect sporting on the wing.
Blue through the heat, the far-off mountains show,
Shouldering their peaks, away o'er heath and fen,
Far up the eastern sky. The fierce sun-glow
Strikes to the heart of things; while now and then
Gushes of odor from the south go by,

Borne on light airs that neither live nor die.

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Dread Force, in whom of old we loved to see
A nursing mother, clothing with her life
The seeds of Love divine, with what sore strife
We hold or yield our thoughts of Love and thee!
Thou art not "calm," but restless as the ocean,
Filling with aimless toil the endless years,
Stumbling on thought, and throwing off the spheres,
Churning the Universe with mindless motion.
Dull fount of joy, unhallowed source of tears,
Cold motor of our fervid faith and song,
Dead, but engendering life, love, pangs, and fears,
Thou crownedst thy wild work with foulest wrong, -
When first thou lightedst on a seeming goal,
And darkly blundered on man's suffering soul.

III.

Blind Cyclop, hurling stones of destiny,

And not in fury! - working bootless ill,
In mere vacuity of mind and will
Man's soul revolts against thy work and thee!
Slaves of a despot, conscienceless and nil,

Slaves, by mad chance befooled to think them free,
We still might rise, and with one heart agree
To mar the ruthless "grinding of thy mill"!
Dead tyrant, though our cries and groans pass by thee,
Man, cutting off from each new "tree of life
Himself, its fatal flower, could still defy thee,
In waging on thy work eternal strife,—
The races come and coming evermore,
Heaping with hecatombs thy dead-sea shore.

EMILY PFEIFFER

EVERY SATURDAY:

A JOURNAL OF CHOICE READING, JBLISHED WEEKLY BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY, 219 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON;

NEW YORK: HURD AND HOUGHTON;
Cambridge: The Riverside Press,

ngle Numbers, 10 cts.; Monthly Parts, 50 cts.; Yearly Subscription, $5.00. N. R. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY and EVERY SATURDAY sent to one address $8.00.

SPECIAL BIBLIOGRAPHIES.

THERE has been much complaint among the more terprising booksellers of the very discreditable condition American bibliography. Now and then some one has ttempted to supply the deficiency, and there has been a seful substitute in the catalogue of current books brought gether by Mr. Leypoldt from the several individual atalogues of the various publishers; but the fact remains ither that there is not enough general interest in the atter, or the task is too gigantic for any one person to ndertake it.

Probably the difficulty is owing largely to the fact that vast number of books have been published in America which are reprints of English books, yet not so stated; nany of them, thus reprinted, have been subjected to more or less editorial revision; a great number of books have been issued in a semi-private manner; a number have been as it were secretly published as subscription books, and finally the practice of stereotyping, more common here than abroad, has led to the practice of reissuing old books at comparatively little expense, and giving them a fresh start in the world under new names.

Mr. Leypoldt's Publishers' Weekly is doing very much toward gathering year by year the material for a full bibliography, but the book-trade is in an almost wholly unorganized condition, and the multiplication of business centres all over the country leads to desultory publishing which it is exceedingly difficult to register. No doubt the increased interest in the subject will lead to some combined action finally, perhaps under the auspices of the Librarian of Congress, who has unusual facilities for superintending the work, but meanwhile we would suggest a method by which great assistance could be rendered and a constant service done to the public.

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The real demand made upon a bibliography, we suppose, is by students of special subjects, who wish to know what has been published in their department. Now it is noticeable that there is a tendency toward the publication organs, so called, of every department of thought or work which has any organization at all. The persons who conduct and support these journals are specialists who are on the keen hunt for everything relating to their specialty. Such journals should make a business of recording in systematic form, at regular intervals, the names of all publications bearing upon the specialty that have appeared in any part of America, not confining their attention to the books and papers which have been sent to them for notice, but giving as a matter of scientific news the titles, and such explanation as may be required, of all publications of which they are aware. Then the monthly or quarterly journals thus recording could summarize the whole at the close of the year. The rival journals could vie with each other in the fulness and accuracy of their information, and the solitary organs could make as mighty a show as their specialty permitted.

This work could be done to excellent effect by the scientific journals We do not see, indeed, why a yearly publication devoted simply to the cataloguing of books of science, arranged in scientific classes, might not be practicable, to be issued by a body of scientific men, or an institution like the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge, the work being parcelled out to experts, whose business it should be to keep track of all that was appearing. Such a book would be of unspeakable advantage to students, especially if it also included articles in magazines as well as separate pamphlets and books.

Let the Museum, for instance, take science; the various medical journals compete with each other in recording medical works; the General Theological Library in Boston take theology; the law periodicals take law; the National Academy of Design works on fine art; and by degrees the whole body of literature of special sort would be recorded by those persons who were most conversant with the several classes. The labor of the man who should gather this material into comprehensive shape would be great, but nothing like so great as it now is. The preliminary work, and especially the work of bringing to light obscure and half private works, must be done by enthusiastic volunteers.

NOTES.

The United States Official Postal Guide, which has been under consideration at Washington for some time past, and for the publication of which the last Congress provided, is to be issued by Hurd and Houghton, New York The Riverside Press, Cambridge, by authority of the Post-Office Department. The contents of the Guide will be prepared under the supervision of the Department, and the work will have an official character which will render it of great value especially to business and professional men. The Guide will be issued quarterly, the first number to appear on the first of October next, and will contain an alphabetical list of all the post-offices in the United States, with the county and State, and salary of the postmaster; money-order offices, domestic and international; chief regulations of the Post-Office Department; instructions to the public; foreign and domestic postage tables; schedules of the arrival and departure of foreign mail steamers, with such other information as may be required. One number each year will contain about four hundred octavo pages, having special matter not in the other numbers of the year, which will contain about two hundred and fifty pages each. The publication quarterly will enable the Department to revise the matter, and keep the information always fresh. Such a Guide is in use in Great Britain, and will be found of special value in our country, where the number of post-offices is so great. The dedication prefixed to "The Notary's Nose," by the translator and publisher, develops a state of feeling within the charmed circle of the publishing profession, which ought to do something toward dispelling the prejudice which prevails against this class of men. translation," it reads, "is, without his knowledge or consent, dedicated to Edward B. Dickinson, a stenographer who not only, by his skill in his art, relieved the translator of much labor, but by his amiable disposition, good taste, and knowledge of many tongues, went beyond his mere professional duty to frequently offer the right word where the translator hesitated, and to sometimes suggest a better word than the translator had uttered." One may find a similar instance in the good-natured dedication which the same translator gave to his colleague, Mr. Leypoldt, at the

"This

beginning of "The Man with a Broken Ear." Mr. Randolph, the publisher, dedicated a volume of poems to Mr. Scribner, Mr. Bayard Taylor dedicated one of his novels to his publisher, Mr. Putnam, and no doubt there are enough other instances, if brought together, to make quite an array of evidence.

--

We are likely to have another lively discussion of the University question. As President Eliot's paper before the National Educational Association last year was the cause of some sharp firing, so President White's paper on the same subject, before the same association this year, at Detroit, will probably be the text for an animated controversy. It is only briefly summarized in the papers as yet, but the point most likely to be discussed is his proposition that provision for the higher education of the people must be made by the people at large, through their State and National Legislatures, by providing a first-class college or colleges, fully equipped, and free from sectarianism. Yet the older and larger colleges are steadily freeing themselves from State control, and looking for their governing body among their own graduates.

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A paper entitled "Reminiscences," by David Parsons Holton, M. D., has come to hand, and we recognize with delight the philological waif which was left upon the world's doorstep some two years ago. Every correspondent," says a foot-note to "Reminiscences," " 'may present facts in the form to him or her [himer] most agreeable." We remember well the joy we felt when we lit upon the original proposition made with great dignity by a philologist who has been deeply impressed with the defect of the English language in its department of possessive adjective pronouns, in the constrained use of "his or her" in such phrases as "it is placed to his or her credit." "The substitute for the three words," he says in his circular, "which I now have the honor to propose, is a word of two syllables, a compound of these two pronouns, suggestive of the singular number and possessive case, applicable as a pronoun for man or woman," namely, hizer, "placed to hizer credit," and thus declined: Hesh, hizer, himer. "Should this addition," he adds, "be acceptable to persons speaking and writing the English language,

I will subsequently propose a number of new words, as analogous improvements." We have been waiting patiently for hizer friends to come forward and take their place along with himer while hesh moves forward to greater philological conquests.

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One of the chief objective points of the Oriental Topographical Corps is the establishment of an Oriental Museum in America. Mr. George M. Powell brought back from the expedition of 1873 much valuable material from Africa and Western Asia, for a nucleus of the same. A very valuable instalment of this material has just come to hand from Professor Schumacher, a German engineer, residing at Mount Carmel. This instalment includes over a thousand geological and botanical specimens and shells, building stone, burr stone (for millstones), also soils, rare ancient stone carvings, etc. Professor Schumacher sent, besides, a map of new surveys of some hundreds of square

miles of Palestine.

Paul Boynton, a somewhat noted pearl-diver of At lantic City, is soon to go to New York to make arrange ments for what might reasonably be termed a hazardous undertaking. Mr. C. S. Merriman of New York, the patentee of the life-dress, has offered $500 to Mr. Boynton to make a sea voyage in his suit, in order to demonstrate to the public its merits as a life-preserver. He has ac cepted the proposal, and on or about the 25th of Septem ber he will be carried from New York by an outwardbound steamer to a distance not less than two hundred miles from land, when he will be dropped and left to the mercy of the waves until he shall meet a passing vessel. He will carry with him in a rubber bag sufficient rations consisting of dried meats, etc., for one week, as well as a good quantity of fresh water. He will also carry signal lights and flags, with a sectional staff twelve feet long for raising them, all of which are to be stowed away in the unlimited portals of the rubber bag, which is about two feet square, and is little or no inconvenience, strapped to and floated at the side of the swimmer. The feat by many may be considered as deliberately challenging death, but Mr. Boynton is very sanguine of success, and even says that he would willingly allow himself to be left a thousand miles out, if necessary, without the slightest fears regarding his safe recovery. He places implicit confidence in the Merriman life-suit, and feels an anxiety to have its merits thoroughly tested and laid before the public. In order to accomplish this object he has chosen the mentioned date as the one when he will be most 'likely to en counter the severe equinoctial gales.

- The centenary of Priestley's great discovery of oxy gen was celebrated in the village of Northumberland, Pennsylvania, on the first of August. The celebration, more correctly, was of the origin of modern chemistry, and was engaged in both in England, the land of Priestley's birth, and in America, where he died. Noted men of science were present, and an address was given by Prof. Benjamin Silliman of Yale College, on "American Contributions to Chemistry," in which he treats specially of the memorabilia of Priestley at Northumberland, but the senwork of Franklin and Rumford. There are not many timent of the celebration was none the less marked. Chemists have not yet analyzed away the human weakness for centenaries.

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A ROSE IN JUNE.

the

CHAPTER XVII.

A JOURNAL OF CHOICE READING.

ROSE! is it possible?" he cried. was standing in the midst of great, luxurious, beautiful drawof which he hoped she was queen and mistress, her black breaking harshly upon all the armony of neutral tints around. ace, which he saw in the glass as tered the room, was framed in the veil which she had thrown back her hat, and which drooped down r shoulders on either side. She quite pale-her cheeks blanched fall trace of color, with someof that chilled and spiritual light h sometimes appears in the colorclearness of the sky after a storm. eyes were larger than usual, and a dilated, exhausted look. Her was full of a speechless, silent Tuess-eagerness which could yet was almost beyond the comartifices of concealment. Her ds were softly clasped together, a certain cloquence in their close are, supporting each other. All Mr. Incledon saw in the glass ore he could see her; and, though went in with lively and joyful anition, the sight startled him a little. came forward, however, quite erfully, though his heart failed him, took the clasped hands into his

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SATURDAY, AUGUST 29, 1874.

comfortable; and then tell me what this terrible difficulty is."

66

Oh, don't take it so lightly," said Rose, "please don't. I am very, very unhappy, and I have determined to tell you everything and to let you judge for me. You have the best right."

"Thanks for saying so," he said, with a smile, kissing her hand. He thought she meant that as she was so surely his, it was naturally his part to think for her and help her in everything. What so natural? And then he awaited her disclosure, still smiling, expecting some innocent dilemma, such as would be in keeping with her innocent looks. He could not understand her, nor the gravity of the appeal to him which she had come to make.

"Oh, Mr. Incledon !" cried Rose, "if you knew what I meant, you would not smile you would not take it so easily. I have come to tell you everything how I have lied to you and been a cheat and a deceiver. Oh ! don't laugh you don't know - you don't know how serious it is ! "

"Nay, dear child," he said, "do you want to frighten me? for if you do, you must think of something more likely than that you are a cheat and deceiver. Come now, I will be serious

as serious as a judge. Tell me what it is, Rose."

"It is about you and me," she said suddenly, after a little pause.

"Ah!"— this startled him for the first time. His grasp tightened upon her hand; but he used no more endearing words. "Go on," he said, softly.

"May I begin at the beginning? I should like to tell you everything. When you first spoke to me, Mr. Incledon, I told you there was some

Mr. Incledon," she said hastily,
do not be glad salon bastilyon
I

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"Ah!" cried Mr. Incledon again, still more sharply, "he is here now. You have seen him since he came back?"

"It is not that," said Rose. "Oh! let me tell you from the beginning. I said then that he had never said

anything to me. I could not tell you

his name because I did not know what his feelings were-only my own, of which I was ashamed. Mr. Incledon, have patience with me a little. Just before he went away he came to the rectory to say good-by. He sent up a message to ask me to come down, but mamma went down instead. Then his mother sent me a little note,

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begging me to go to bid him good-by. It was while papa was ill; he held my hand, and would not let me. I begged him, only for a minute; but he held my hand and would not let me go. I had to sit there and listen, and hear the door open and shut, and then steps in the hall and on the gravel, and then mamma coming slowly back again, as if nothing had happened, up-stairs and along the corridor. Oh I thought she was walking on my heart!

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Rose's eyes were so full that she di not see how her listener looked. He held her hand still, but with his disengaged hand he partially covered his face.

"Then after that," she resumed, pausing for breath, "all our trouble came. I did not seem to care for anything. It is dreadful to say it — and I never did say it till now- but I don't think I felt so unhappy as I ought about poor papa; I was so unhappy before. It did not break my heart as grief ought to do. I was only dull-dull — miserable, and did not care for anything; but then everybody was unhappy; and there was good reason for it, and no one thought of me. It went on like that till you came."

Here he stirred a little and grasped her hand more tightly. What she had said hitherto had not been pleasant to him; but yet it was all before he had made his appearance as her suitor - all innocent, visionary- the very romance of youthful liking. Such an early dream of the dawning any man, even the most rigid, might forgive to his bride.

"You came -oh! Mr. Incledon, do not be angry-I want to tell you everything. If it vexes you and hurts you, will you mind? You came; and mamma told me that same night. Oh, how frightened I was and miserable! Everything seemed to turn round with me. She said you loved me, and that you were very good and very kind (but that I knew), and would do so much for the boys, and be a comfort and help to her in our great poverty." At these words he stirred again and loosened, but did not quite let go, his grasp of her hand. Rose was, without knowing it, acting like a skilful surgeon, cutting deep and sharp, that the pain might be over the sooner. He leaned his head on his other hand, turning it away from her, and from time to time stirred unconsciously when the sting was too much for him, but

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