was engaged in a Young Ladies' Seminary. The school never
went on more smoothly than during the first period of his administration,
after he had arranged its duties, and taken his share, and even more than
his share, upon himself. But human nature does not wait for the diploma
of the Apollinean Institute to claim the exercise of it, instincts and
faculties. These young girls saw but little of the youth of the
neighborhood. The mansion-house young men were off at college or in the
cities, or making love to each other's sisters, or at any rate
unavailable for some reason or other. There were a few "clerks,"--that
is, young men who attended shops, commonly called "stores,"--who were
fond of walking by the Institute, when they were off duty, for the sake
of exchanging a word or a glance with any one of the young ladies they
might happen to know, if any such were stirring abroad: crude young men,
mostly, with a great many "Sirs" and "Ma'ams" in their speech, and with
that style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if
the salesman were recommending himself to a customer, "First-rate family
article, Ma'am; warranted to wear a lifetime; just one yard and three
quarters in this pattern, Ma'am; sha'n't I have the pleasure?" and so
forth. If there had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever
so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too rigorous to allow
any romantic infection to be introduced from without.

Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed,
well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but
the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls
day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs,
his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often
soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and
breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in
which a hundred of these little piping streamlets-might lose themselves;
anybody might see what would happen. Young girls wrote home to their
parents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute,
and thought they were making rapid progress in their studies. There was
a great enthusiasm for the young master's reading-classes in English
poetry. Some of the poor little things began to adorn themselves with an
extra ribbon, or a bit of such jewelry as they had before kept for grea