turns, to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it
had never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveliness.
No mercy for you, my love! Justice, strict justice, you shall certainly
have,--neither more nor less. For, look you, there are dozens, scores,
hundreds, with whom you must be weighed in the balance; and you have got
to learn that the "struggle for life" Mr. Charles Darwin talks about
reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mollusks in
shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything that fights for
breathing-room and food and love in any coat of fur or feather! Happy
they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back
into the pendants of the insolent lustres!

--Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl
ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven! Her keen eyes sparkled under her
plainly parted hair and the green de-laine moulded itself in those
unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small
shopkeeper's daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer's young
ladies. She would have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, but
she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.

The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the
Colonel's hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which
many of the visitors gave it. Conversation, which had begun like a
summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and
occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested
laugh from some Captain or Major or other military personage,--for it may
be noted that all large and loud men in the unpaved districts bear
military titles.

Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered into conversation with
Colonel Sprowle.

"I hope to see our pastor present this evenin'," said the Deacon.

"I don't feel quite sure," the Colonel answered. "His dyspepsy has been
bad on him lately. He wrote to say, that, Providence permittin', it
would be agreeable to him to take a part in the exercises of the evenin';
but I mistrusted he did n't mean to come. To tell the truth, Deacon
Soper, I rather guess he don't like the idee of dancin', and some of the
other little arrangements."

"Well," said the Deacon, "I know there's some condemns dancin'. I've
heerd a good deal of talk about it among the folks round. Some have it
that it never brings a blessin' on a house