have locked up his understanding when he wrote that crying shouldn't be tolerated among children.'

"But didn't Mr. Selwyn take Dr. Bachune up nicely? He looked like a minister. Dr. Bachune never said a word more about inspiration. How beautifully Mr. Selwyn talked about those exceeding great and precious promises. I did really like that man; he came out so boldly. The doctor blushed up to his hair, and Mr. Vole looked so full, I expected every minute he would burst out laughing. He says it was so pat-that is his word—if he likes any thing it is pat. Where do they get all these words? But there's one thing I never want to hear again; that is that three black crow story. Ignorant as I am, I know that by heart. These crows have crowed enough. I should think some committee of geniuses might scare up some thing that would take the place of that crow story. But I must find out about those miniatures. I'll get talking about relations, etc., and I'll get around to it. I'll ask him how many sis

ters he has."

Sure enough, at the tea table she did ask him, and he dignifiedly replied: "I have no sisters, madam."

Some one, I have forgotten who, told me once that Mrs. Edwards was seen much oftener with the Bible in her hand, after she found out that Mr. Selwyn was a minister.

Some how it did get around the table that Mr. Selwyn was a clergyman. Mrs. Edwards couldn't guess how it got out. One night she was alone in the parlor with Kate Howard talking sociably, and after exciting Kate's curiosity to the highest pitch, she did tell her in "the strictest confidence" that one of her guests was a clergyman.

This set Kate to guessing, and very soon she guessed Mr. Selwyn, because he was the only one at the table who hadn't at some time criticised clergymen rather sharply.

But first the secret leaked out, then it was out, and then it spread all over. Mrs. Edwards had found out the fact in such a sly way, she was uneasy lest it should get to Mr. Selwyn's ears, and he suspect that she was a prying, inquis itive, gossiping woman.

She was old enough to have known long ago that secrets are like books and umbrellas-no one will keep them quite as carefully as ourselves; that by some kind of law, secrets, like magnetic currents, always move in circles; you never

can find the beginning or end of them-that they always spread as they diverge from the centre of information, and the circles if not hyperbolas, are hyperboles.

It was too good to keep all alone, so Kate Howard only mentioned it to Mr. Vole, and he promised faithfully be wouldn't breathe a word of it; and if Mrs. Edwards had gone round the circle like the old game of button, button, who's got my button ?-secret, secret, who's got my secret? -it would be the answer in the play, "next door neighbor."

There was no use in being provoked with Kate Howard; she had the best intentions and always looked so goodnatured, you couldn't be angry with her; she knew Mr. Vole would never say any thing about it, of course he would never speak of it, she had as much confidence in him as she had in herself.

It rained one afternoon. Four ladies were in the parlor chatting and crocheting, all except Charity Gouge, who was always working muslin bands, or fixing up head-dresses or discussing the morals and manners of the age. They had been whispering some time, when Miss Charity spoke up. "Why don't he preach if he's a minister? I don't like to see a watchman deserting the walls of Zion," said she in her solemn sentimental drawl, but perhaps he's married a rich wife, and has the bronchitis, and can't preach. It is strange how these rich wives affect clergymen's throats. I believe they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength," said she in a solemn tone.

"It is a pity you didn't try a little of that yourself," said Miss Kate and her eyes twinkled mischievously. "You are always complaining, it might renew your strength."

Miss Charity was always quoting scripture, and she never got it quite right either. She often spoke of that beautiful verse in the Bible about "that bourne from whence no traveller returns."

66

'Hush," said Kate Howard, putting her finger on her lip, "there comes Mrs. Edwards, and she won't hear a word against Mr. Selwyn, she thinks he is perfection."

"I haven't said any thing I'm ashamed of, nothing but the truth," said Miss Charity sitting up very straight and looking very dignified.

Yes," said Kate, "but the truth isn't to be spoken ont at all times, we needn't tell all we know."

Mr. Vole often said it was too bad to make a gouge out of charity, he was always saying it was cold as charity, when the thermometer was near zero, no matter how much his prudent mother stepped on his toes, he would say it though Charity sat opposite to him at the table and he knew her hearing was remarkably acute.

Charity can never be to highly prized in this selfish world," he would say, as he recommended her to his young gentleman friends, " you know.' Charity suffereth long and is kind.''

CHAPTER XX.

CARLEYN'S TIGER IN A TRAP.

MR. JAMES VOLE is sitting in Mr. Carleyn's studio, waiting for Mr. Carleyn to come in. lines

He is humming over these

"I love sweet features; I will own
That I should like myself

To see my portrait on a wall,
Or bust upon a shelf;

But nature sometimes makes one up
Of such sad odds and ends,

It really might be quite as well

Hushed up among one's friends."

Mr. Vole had never had any likeness taken of himselfbut he was an only son and an only child, so his mother said she must have a portrait of James: something might happen, he was always running into danger, he might break his neck yet, she must have a portrait.

So to gratify her, he had consented, and this was his first sitting. He said "a profile cut in black" would suit better his style of face.

He thought it would prove a tedious business, but Carleyn had a way of making the time pass very agreeably to his sitters, and they were soon busily talking, and Mr. Vole almost forgot that he was sitting for his portrait.

I heard Mr. Trap say the other evening at the Academy of Design, Mr. Carleyn," said Mr. Vole," that he took to himself some of the credit of shaping your destiny and fame as a rising young man and artist."

A rising young man means a great deal in his mouth,” said Carleyn, sarcastically. "It is a favorite phrase of his. He used to mean by it, one who by fraud, pettifogging, sly cunning, secret reaching and over-reaching, gained money, lands, tenements and hereditaments; one who, by putting himself and others through a course of cunning and deceit, climbed up at last to society's golden roof, and counted there, his increasing pile of shining dollars.

My destiny," he continued with no little feeling, "would be a ragged, shivering, starving, shadowy, cruel destiny if he had shaped it.

"The word shaped should never be abused by lips like his he never shaped anything. He has knocked out of shape and symmetry every thing his hard hand hath touched.

My angel mother taught me when a little boy never to say a cross word when a kind one would do, and when angry to count a hundred before I spoke. This rule I tried to keep.

"There is no art so badly learned, so miserably practised, as that of finding fault. There is not one man in a thousand who does it wisely, kindly or well-and he who is full of faults himself is sure to be watching and improving chances for finding fault in others. He anticipates mistakes, and scolds at a wrong before it is done : he is always on the starboard side of life, straining his eyes to watch and scold, and scare and punish the least floating specks of wrong that may be coming towards him, and to crush an insult before its seed is planted; he's always gathering clouds to get up a storm, when really the sky is quite comfortably clear. Mr. John Trap was my guardian. I went from my mother's kind care and consistent gentle influence, to John Trap's house. I said to myself, boy as I was and ignorant of human nature, Mr. John Trap is a good lawyer, a successful practical man-so he must have good judgment. Mr. Trap is an edu cated man; of course he is a gentleman-dignified, consistent, just. Mr. Trap has a fine position and a liberal edu cation he is therefore a man of character, and I, as a boy, will acquire some character by being under his influence and watching his example; and I already began to think of him as a type of manly nobility and a model of manly excellence. Moreover he was a person of fine external ap

pearance, I had often thought as I had seen him standing in a crowd.

'I went to live with him. He was at first pleasant, then civil, and then decent; at last the natural man came out, and he acted himself. I looked at him with wonder and astonishment. He often scared me through and through. Sometimes he would lavish his most complimentary epithets upon me, but if I chanced to be out in the evening three minutes later than half past nine, he would blow me all the way up the two pair of stairs, and I could hear his voice in low thunder dying away in faint echoes after I had closed and locked my door.

"If once in two years he had to get up and let me in, for he never would let me take a night key-if the great John Trap were really thus disturbed, he would get into a terrible rage; he couldn't have been more excited if his wife had been shot, his child stolen, or his personal property carried off by burglars.

"I was scared at first, but at last I learned to despise the man who had so little control over himself. I used to comfort myself with the thought that as I was not his wife or child, my life-lease with him would soon expire.

He seemed to think these little peculiarities' of his all right-only a part of his dignity and greatness, and now he really boasts of shaping my destiny.

tice.

.

I think he has exercised an influence upon my life. I learned while with him to suspect, to mistrust. Let a boy be deceived once, and he will soon lose some of his faith in human nature. His overbearing tyrannical insolence awoke feelings in me which I knew not before that I possessed. All the indignant manhood within me was aroused. I felt at times as if I would like to see him punished by some despotic power for so outraging all sense of honor and jusI had such a strong dislike of his stormy, passionate manner, that I had a perfect horror myself of ever being in a passion and losing my self-control. He would seize upon some little mistake or accident, and scold, and scold about it, in every possible shape of scolding; and if at last the individual scolded defended himself, he would reprove him for getting so excited about such little things. He was always sticking pins into his friends, and then abusing them for feeling so nervous and hurt, and making such a fuss.