prised stare, "I was sure the Evil One had something to do with it;" and she went off very slowly down into the cellar to get her coal and kindling-wood, fearfully afraid of encountering the "three black ghosts in the cellar."

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WENDONS TALK ABOUT THE OPERA.

"Make love in tropes, in bombast break his heart,

In turn and simile resign his breath,

And rhyme and quibble in the pains of death."-TICKELL.

MRS. WENDON sees that the doctor is growing pale, careworn, depressed. She can imagine no adequate cause. His practice is increasing and successful, his professional position high. She fears he is injuring himself by close confinement. Change and recreation, even a little pleasurable excitement, might do him good. She urges him to go occasionally to places of amusement-they have not been to an opera in a long time. It might please Nepenthe-she has never been, and she needs change, too; something to divert her thoughts from the recent mysterious attempt on her life. She is now old enough to enjoy and appreciate fine music. So she talks to the doctor one morning, as he rises from the table, leaving his untasted coffee and neglected omelet.

He is not musically gifted or musically appreciative. He laughs a little about this foolish worship of imported prima donnas, but promises to go that evening on Nepenthe's account, not on his own-he is getting on well enough.

Mrs. Wendon reads from the morning Herald "The farewell Concert of Madame Geztimer, who is in opera again. It is not her farewell, after all. She is giving us four nights of opera, and charming nights they are, too. We have never heard finer music-a different opera each night-or seen larger or more fashionable audiences. Her little season is a decided success."

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How did you like the opera last night ?" said Mrs. Wen. don to Nepenthe the next morning.

"I am no judge of music, and then I took my

novitiate in

opera going last night," said Nepenthe. "You understand all those scientific trills, rolls and quavers of which I am so ignorant. I sat last evening nearly three hours. The singing was wonderful. I might practice all the hours of three lives, and I never could sing one of those trilling, warbling, soaring, flying, swelling, vanishing strains. Yet no mortal, in exquisite joy or overwhelming grief, warbles like that. Joy is an outburst-a gush-not an elaborate flourish. Lov ing, fighting, heart-aching, heart-breaking, were all wonderfully sung.

Think in real life of contending armies of real men, with real swords, standing and patiently waiting for a man to sing out a petition for some captive's release. Such artistic grief is never seen such sudden terror or joy is never sung out. The singing is wonderful, but I am continually drawing the startling contrast between operatic representation and the real deeds of real people."

I cannot even work myself up into a pity for a woman," says the doctor, coming up just then, "who sings out her broken heart in such elaborate strains; and if a lover makes his avowal in the same artistic melody, I always feel like saying. 'If you love her, why don't you walk up or kneel down and say so like a human man, and not stand there singing your heart out like an amateur?' I know you go to the opera to hear the fine singing, and see the wonderful power of music to express every variety of feeling and action. The heart's best feelings are never in full dress; this idea of giving love and regret the full toilet they get in operatic scenes, is to me unnatural. The charm of tragedy is in making one, for the time, feel that the characters are real. These groans and sighs and battles and deaths are all well sung, but if I were very angry with a man I don't think I should stand up before him and sing at him.

"The thing I dislike most is this operatic death. Young and beautiful women will sing their disappointed love, their failing health, their aching, loving, breaking heart, with pale face, dishevelled hair, and white shadowy garmentscoughing, gasping, trembling, fainting with the airy breath. of fleeting song. We listen to the last musical sigh, we catch the faint echo of the last warble, till the last low life note dies on the hushed lips; and then, a moment after, re surrectionized from the song-death, the singer comes out

and moves off the stage, brightly smiling, pleasantly bowing, and gracefully picking up showers of falling flowers. The farce comes so soon after the death tragedy.

"I think the death scene should be the last act of lifewhen the last curtain falls. I don't like this make-believe failing and dying, I may speak professionally. Wasn't it horrible, when the cholera was raging in Paris, the people were amusing themselves in the theatre in acting death by the cholera in all its fearful stages and mortal agonies?"

"But did you hear the squeaking tenor? Why will people insist on playing the part of which they know nothing?" "I believe it is the way with most of us," said Mrs. Wendon. "We are all apt to think we can do some one thing well, in which we are really deficient. The very faults we have, so glaring in the eyes of others, we think are only respectable, comfortable, decent peculiarities, rather becoming than otherwise."

"But how in the world are we ever going to know what we are, or what we can do ?" said the doctor.

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Every man I have well known," said Mrs. Wendon, "is sure he can do something quite well, of which he really knows nothing. One man is very deaf-so deaf we all have to scream out our questions and answers when talking with him; he says he isn't much deaf after all, he can hear most as well as anybody if we only speak distinctly. My old aunt Jane is quite sure she can see without her spectacles, almost as well as ever-she only wears them to rest her eyes --but she is almost as blind as a bat. Her husband thinks he is a very young looking man, as smart as most young folks, and can do more work in a day now than any young man; yet he is nearly a cripple, has a trembling voice, tottering step, and is almost toothless. One gentleman who wrote the dullest essays I ever heard, said he thought he could do one thing well-that was, write essays. He made the remark to his wife, and I overheard him. She was the homeliest woman I ever knew, and she said to me once when we were talking about looks, she was always thankful for one thing-that she was made at least good-looking.' A lady once brought me some poetry of her own composition to get my opinion of it. It was about cold stars, fair flowers, and pale moons. She said it was always easy for her to write poetry-she never had to fix it over; it always came

right. She would string words together of all sizes, shapes and accents, and if there was a jingle at the end it was poetry."

As Nepenthe went out of the room, the doctor said,

How Nepenthe has changed! She is quite young to think so originally and speak so frankly about something she has seen and heard but once-but she has a wonderful ear for music. I have engaged Signor Venini to give her instruction. He is an incomparable artist, and she has already an exquisite touch; but those Scotch songs she sings charmingly. I think she has the sweetest voice I ever heard it is sweet as a lute, rich as a harp, soft as a flute; why, Minnie, if we had searched the world over, we couldn't have found a more gifted soul or affectionate heart."

CHAPTER XV.

IMPULSES-THE ARREST.

"One thread of kindness draws more than a hundred yoke of oxen."

"THERE are some things I never told you, Minnie," said the doctor one morning. "When I took Nepenthe from the hospital the nurse whispered to me that she was of low family and doubtful origin. I wouldn't prejudice you, so I kept it to myself. I believe with a French author, that all our first benevolent impulses are good, generous, heroic— reflection weakens and kills them. The soul first speaks, and the language is that of love and virtue: the intellect reasons afterwards, and its reasonings are more favorable to matter than the soul.

"I was told when I took Nepenthe from the hospital, that I was acting solely from impulse, and that impulse was a very imprudent guide; but I have done nothing kind or generous in my life without yielding to the promptings of some noble impulse. There is more good crushed in the

ger

bud by resisting good impulses, than evil prematurely done by acting too suddenly upon them. There isn't much danof our ever being too good, too kind, or too generous. Many a wrinkle of care you can smooth out clear and beautiful, if you seize upon the impulse while it is warm and fresh, and press life's rough seams down. How much happier and more benevolent would I have been, had I always acted promptly upon my first, best, warmest feelings, without arguing and reasoning, and wondering whether after all it would be best-would it pay, was it prudent, expedi

ent?"

"These noble impulses," said Mrs. Wendon, are like the little Artesian wells I used to see in California-an invisible hand penetrates the troubled strata of the soil, till from its depths upwells a fountain pure and sparkling, invigorating the whole valley of the soul. One of these Artesian impulses jetting out, may freshen and beautify hundreds of drooping thoughts and withering hopes."

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"Yes," said the doctor, "impulses are the first stamps from the mint of thought, clearest and deepest, the most durable on the leaves of the unfolding soul, like the figures on the first sheets of our quires of cream-laid paper; and the original pictures of great masters, clearer and bolder than the weak after copies and feeble imitations, they flow spontaneously from the creative soul, and are not mechanically struck off on steel or wood.

Impulse is the great artist of the soul's studio; with marvellous dash and sweep of hand, she sketches the outlines of great deeds for us to execute through our lives full lengths, those beautiful pictures of genial kindness and cordial benevolence, which illustrate the long story of our dull common lives, are engraven by her skilful hand."

I beg your pardon, reader, for keeping you standing spiritual, hat in hand, so long in the vestibule of my story, listening to the doctor's talk about impulse, but poor impulse is so often berated and abused, censured and maligned, as a wrong-doer and mischief-maker, I always wait patiently and thankfully when I hear her praised or truly valued.

"The greatest things we do," added the doctor, we feel stirred up as by some oracular voice within to do suddenly and successfully. Nepenthe is a child of impulse, and I believe she had a refined, accomplished, and virtuous mother.