-There's the washing. I've heard on good authority, that a respectable gentleman actually jerked off and threw on the floor, in a paroxysm of anger, his standing collar, forsooth because it was not starched stiff enough to suit his lordship ; and so a man who will boldly face advancing armies, or coolly reply to an insulting antagonist, will be conquered and fretted by one little collar, dust on his overcoat, a speck or a wrinkle on his shirt bosom; but if the shirt don't fit, O what a calamity--and when will a man own that a homemade shirt ever does fit?

They used to ruffle the shirts, but now, one would think to hear them talk, that the shirts ruffled the men-if it don't fit, if there's a wrinkle in the bosom, or it draws on the shoulder, if there's a twist in the sleeve-the button holes are a mile too big, or they're so small he takes his penknife and cuts away at them, the neck band is made so tight, and awkward, he'll get the bronchitis, he's had trouble with his throat these two years, because of these awkward shirts, and so he'll fret and fume and fuss and give each morning an elaborate dissertation on all the manifold benefits of good shirt making if he had time and materials, couldn't he make a shirt that would fit-it only needs a little common sense'tis easy enough to see where the trouble is.

"A woman will often bear a little annoyance better than a man; a man will use such strong adjectives for weak ideas, such large words for small occasions. Most every man has some expletive, with which his impatience effervesces, George, Harry, Thunder, Mars, Good Heavens ! The man scolds his wife, and always calls it making suggestions. If she cries, she make demonstrations if he threaten to skin or thrash his child, impetuously shaking him, as if good could be shaken in or evil be shaken out, he calls it 'salutary discipline.'

"Talk of a woman's being nervous when sick. Why if a man has a headache, it is intolerable. How he groans! If he has a little fever he is burning up.' If he has a cold he thinks he is seriously ill.' If called up once in the night, or awake half an hour, why he is rubbing his eyes, and broke of his rest,' for a week afterwards. If a little ill, how very blue, uncomfortable and worried he will feel. But Frank Carleyn is no such fussy, fidgetty, man; he would be reasonable, and too much absorbed in his profession, to

make an idol of his dinner or a pet of his constitution -I don't believe he'd know or find fault, if you'd set nails before him for breakfast, but I don't care what he does, or is. I don't want to analyze his habits or nature. I love him."

"I think you will find, Florence, that if a man does poetize and philosophize or paint ideals, he'll know when beef is well done, and beefsteak nicely broiled; and the best of men may make a wry face at insipid coffee and tough sirloin. A hungry husband must be fed before he is caressed, entertained or charmed."

Nepenthe Stuart came in just then, so they continued their conversation in French, supposing of course she was ignorant of the French language.

"I will not be cut out by that low-born, low-bred girl. I have never failed in anything I have undertaken," said Florence, in an angry tone.

"Don't get so excited, Florence," said Mrs. Elliott; "we'll have her married yet. I have praised her up to the skies to Mr. Nicholson, and she may well be thankful if she can get such a husband. It is a better fate than she deserves to have an offer from a man of his great wealth and acknowledged position. It might make her proud and overbearing to be placed in such an elevated station. It will no doubt >elate her exceedingly, to receive proposals from such a man, he is really a great catch for any girl. He is very handsome, immensely rich, and growing richer all the time."

My name shall be Florence Carleyn, or Florence Elliott till I die," said Florence; "and I will crush every obstacle that comes in my path, as I crush this fly," said she, as she pressed her hand on a little fly on the window sill in front of her; "but we must take care that Nepenthe does not find out about that legacy. It would make her feel so independent of us and rich husbands too. I hope she'll know nothing of Mr. Nicholson's hereditary insanity. Neither of his brothers lived to be forty without being insane, and I have heard it confidentially stated that his family physician says he will certainly be insane before he dies, and he may be at any time. I really think he acts a little queer now, occasionally. Why once he brought me a rare boquet of heliotropes, japonicas, and tuberoses, with a small sunflower in the centre. It looked so queer, and about as suitable as one of those hod-carriers would, dancing at my next recep

tion in his working costume. It is the only queer thing I ever saw in Mr. Nicholson-but sometimes there's a strange wild light in his eye. Of course Nepenthe, penniless and dependent, will be glad and thankful for his attentions, but yet she has a will of her own, and I will crush it if I can. I have shown her in every possible way that her presence in the evening in the parlor is disagreeable to me. She shall marry Mr. Nicholson. I never willed a thing but I accomplished it, and mother, you never opposed me. You always taught me that I might, I must have my way."

CHAPTER XXV.

NEPENTHE WRITES.

What radiant visions glorious lie
Like sunset clouds. piled mountain high;
O'er thought's great shore sublimely roll
The surging billows of the soul.

On mem'ry's far-receding strand,
Are shells and pearls and sparkling sand;
Hope's fading sunset stains with gold

The oriel windows of the soul.

NEPENTHE said nothing to any one of those long days and lonely evenings, when to avoid intruding her presence and society upon the haughty Florence, she secluded herself in her room, writing, by herself, early in the morning, and late in the evening.

With no home, lover, friend, she created ideal homes, lovers, friends. When her aching heart was loneliest, hour after hour she talked on paper with these noiseless, invisible friends. Rapidly the pages increased, as the plot sketched and acted out in dream-land was written out in her manuscript. As her thoughts came fast and warm, rising in misty tears, or falling in radiant pearls along the shore of her spirit or washed up from the great gulf of the past, there were none to gather and polish and prize them, till at last, in the sunshine of her spirit, on the white surface of her manuscript, through the double convex-glass of her experience, the camera obscura of the darkened chamber of

her soul exhibited distinctly in their native colors the images of her beautiful thoughts. The noblest and dearest of her ideal heroes, turn the glass of her soul as she would, would take the shape and form, the beauty and expression of Frank Carleyn. When he first looked upon the pure surface of her heart, his image was fixed, photographed there forever; and every after manly impression struck off from the leaves of her soul into the leaves of her manuscript, would have the look of that first impression, exposed to the vapor of tears, or to joy's feverish heat-the image was always appearing, as if by enchantment.

She wrote to occupy busy thoughts-give vent to overcharged feelings, and forget unshared sorrows. As page after page grew under her hand, she never thought it might be a book at last. She had a hope that some eye might at some time read the unpretending manuscript, and if dawn came at last, she herself might read over its chapters of sorrow, and add with sunshine gilding the hills of her life, the concluding finis.

She never thought who would publish, sell or buy itwith her it was only a manuscript. She thought not of sheitering it under the adorned and gilded cover of a book. She had never known or dreamed or heard of one prophetic glance of that influential and powerful individual, the publisher's reader, who sits in his sovereign chair, repeating his favorite phrase, ""Tis very well written, but not the class of works we publish-we want something more thrilling" as with one wave of his powerful hand he banishes into the dark realm of hopeless oblivion many a manuscript freighted with winged hopes and glorious dreams of fame's golden heights and immortal laurels ;-but she wrote on, as the sea asks no echo to its moanings from the cold shore, the stars hope for no thanks from the gloomy night, and the flower seeks no reward from the crushing hand.

By accident, she became acquainted one day with a wise, kind, polite old gentleman, Professor J, a German, a thorough classic and an accomplished Oriental scholar, an extensive traveller, an excellent linguist, and a scientific naturalist. He came to see her, and entertained and charmed some of her loneliest. hours. One day he showed her his large and rare herbarium, in which he had preserved flowers, leaves and bulbs, which he had gathered in

Germany, France, Italy, Prussia, Poland, and some at the Crimea, Caucasus, and at Teflis.

He preserved the bulbs in his herbarium, just as he had found them, all but one, which he found in Teflis and which he cut open with a sharp knife and applied a hot iron to the inner surface of each part.

Four years after, when in St. Petersburgh, he examined his herbarium, and all those bulbs, once so perfect and symmetrical, were dried, shrivelled, musty and mouldy; while from the parts of the little Teflis bulb, to which he had applied the knife and the iron, little fresh leaves were peeping out. Its unscorched, unharmed peers, were moulding around it unblessed by no green resurrection, while through the sharp stab and the burning fire it had unfolded its germ of fragrant beauty. The quiet biding of the blade and the iron, like patient mortal suffering, had wrought out its unfolding glory.

The kind old gentleman took so much interest in Nepenthe that he told her some anecdotes about his interviews with Lord Byron in Venice in 1815, when he saw him swim four miles from St. Marc to Lido, and asked him if he were not afraid of the sharks?

"Oh no!" said Lord Byron, as he was stepping into a gondola, "I am a fatalist-the sharks will not touch me until my time comes to die."

The professor lent Nepenthe some printed accounts of his travels to read, and at last encouraged her to show him something of her own.

She read him a little poem, written one night when she was alone and sad.

He sat still as she read, and at last, when she finished it, he broke out in his peculiar foreign, yet eloquent English: Why, Mademoiselle Stuart! With what high and mighty inspiration, is your mind endowed? Your thoughts, clear and beautiful, flow from your soul like a river. Men will read them and love them, and the world shall hear of you."

Poor Nepenthe was unused to praise. Nobody praised, flattered, complimented her. Sarcasm, suspicion, slight, insult were her daily food, her constant companions. But this man who had seen kings and princes, lived at courts, travelled with sages, whose intellect towered above the