elling what gratitude and natural sensibility might bring about.

Certificates are, for the most part, like ostrich-eggs; the giver never
knows what is hatched out of them. But once in a thousand times they act
as curses are said to,--come home to roost. Give them often enough,
until it gets to be a mechanical business, and, some day or other, you
will get caught warranting somebody's ice not to melt in any climate, or
somebody's razors to be safe in the hands of the youngest children.

I had an uneasy feeling, after giving this certificate. It might be all
right enough; but if it happened to end badly, I should always reproach
myself. There was a chance, certainly, that it would lead him or others
into danger or wretchedness. Any one who looked at this young man could
not fail to see that he was capable of fascinating and being fascinated.
Those large, dark eyes of his would sink into the white soul of a young
girl as the black cloth sunk into the snow in Franklin's famous
experiment. Or, on the other hand, if the rays of a passionate nature
should ever be concentrated on them, they would be absorbed into the very
depths of his nature, and then his blood would turn to flame and burn his
life out of him, until his cheeks grew as white as the ashes that cover a
burning coal.

I wish I had not said either sex in my certificate. An academy for young
gentlemen, now; that sounds cool and unimaginative. A boys' school, that
would be a very good place for him;--some of them are pretty rough, but
there is nerve enough in that old Wentworth strain of blood; he can give
any country fellow, of the common stock, twenty pounds, and hit him out
of time in ten minutes. But to send such a young fellow as that out a
girl's-nesting! to give this falcon a free pass into all the dove-cotes!
I was a fool,--that's all.

I brooded over the mischief which might come out of these two words until
it seemed to me that they were charged with destiny. I could hardly
sleep for thinking what a train I might have been laying, which might
take a spark any day, and blow up nobody knows whose peace or prospects.
What I dreaded most was one of those miserable matrimonial misalliances
where a young fellow who does not know himself as yet flings his
magnificent future into the checked apron-lap of some fresh-faced,
half-bred country-girl, no more fit to be mated with him than her
father's horse to go in double harness with Flora Temple. To thin