few practical people have already discovered. And
just so these beauties that grow and ripen against the city-walls, these
young fellows with cheeks like peaches and young girls with cheeks like
nectarines, show that the most perfect forms of artificial life can do as
much for the human product as garden-culture for strawberries and
blackberries.

If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way, with so pretty,
nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty Forrester waiting for him to
speak to her, he would have to be dropped from this narrative as a person
unworthy of his good-fortune, and not deserving the kind reader's further
notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on her than he
said to himself that she was charming, and that he wished she were one of
his scholars at the Institute. So he began talking with her in an easy
way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and, of course,
could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she might be not
more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore could hardly be a
match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and eighteen year-old
first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute. But city-wall-fruit
ripens early, and he soon found that this girl's training had so
sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need not be at the
trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her level.

The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations
without effort, true to itself always however the manners of those around
it may change. Self-respect and respect for others,--the sensitive
consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the ship's
binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the two
concentric rings which suspend it on their pivots. This thorough-bred
school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not understand where
she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.
The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland
native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good, plain,
worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince's partner where
there were a thousand to choose from.

He looked across to Helen Darley, for he knew she would understand the
glance of admiration with which he called her attention to the young
beauty at his side; and Helen knew what a young girl could be, as
compared with what t