d a little more and then let my eyes droop downward, determined not
to help his presumptuous design to sit by me a single bit.

"Thank you," says he, sitting down close to me, and chucking his satchel
under the seat. "If there is a superior person in the car, I'm certain
to have the luck and the honor to sit beside her. Some people prefer to
look out of the window, but I would rather gaze on a sweet, pretty face,
by a long shot--especially if it does not belong to a girl with airs."

I felt myself blushing all over at this delicate compliment, and
observed, with becoming diffidence and great originality, that "beauty
was only skin-deep at the best, and not by any manner of means to be
compared with Christian piety and high intellect."

The man--he was a stalwart, handsome man; not pursey like Deacon
Pettibone, nor slim to bean-poleishness like the circuit preachers that
live about, and only pick up a little roundness at camp-meetings; but
tall, and what young ladies call imposing. Well, the man gave me another
long look at this, and says he:

"But when all these things jibe in together so beautifully, who is to
say which it is that captivates a man's fancy? Not I. It is my weakness
to take lovely woman into the core of my heart as a whole; but, if there
is one quality that I prize more than another, it is piety."

I blushed with thrilling consciousness of the grace that has been in me
so long that it has become a part of my being; but his praise did not
satisfy me. One hates to take sweet things in driblets, with a spoon,
when the soup-ladle is handy.

"Piety is a thing to be had for praying, fasting, and unlimited
devotion. Anybody can have it who grapples the horn of the altar in
deadly earnest. In short, if there is anything that everybody on earth
has a right to, it's religion. The only aristocracy there is about it,
comes when one reaches the high point of perfect sanctification--a state
that some people do reach, though it is sometimes so difficult to point
out the particular person."

"Ah, indeed!" said he. "But I have penetration, madam, great
penetration. Do not torture your sensitive modesty by an attempt to
conceal extraordinary perfection from one who can so fully appreciate
it, and who grieves to say how uncommon it is."

I said nothing, but dropped my eyes, and sat up straighter than ever.

"Permit me," says my polite fellow-traveller, gently laying his hand on
my satchel; "this is too heavy for t