rdance with his
true nature.

I have thought that there may be something in the conditions with which
you are here surrounded which is repugnant to your feelings,--something
which can be avoided only by keeping yourself apart from the people whose
acquaintance you would naturally have formed. There can hardly be
anything in the place itself, or you would not have voluntarily sought it
as a residence, even for a single season there might be individuals here
whom you would not care to meet, there must be such, but you cannot have
a personal aversion to everybody. I have heard of cases in which certain
sights and sounds, which have no particular significance for most
persons, produced feelings of distress or aversion that made, them
unbearable to the subjects of the constitutional dislike. It has
occurred to me that possibly you might have some such natural aversion to
the sounds of the street, or such as are heard in most houses, especially
where a piano is kept, as it is in fact in almost all of those in the
village. Or it might be, I imagined, that some color in the dresses of
women or the furniture of our rooms affected you unpleasantly. I know
that instances of such antipathy have been recorded, and they would
account for the seclusion of those who are subject to it.

If there is any removable condition which interferes with your free
entrance into and enjoyment of the social life around you, tell me, I beg
of you, tell me what it is, and it shall be eliminated. Think it not
strange, O my brother, that I thus venture to introduce myself into the
hidden chambers of your life. I will never suffer myself to be
frightened from the carrying out of any thought which promises to be of
use to a fellow-mortal by a fear lest it should be considered
"unfeminine." I can bear to be considered unfeminine, but I cannot
endure to think of myself as inhuman. Can I help you, my brother'?

Believe me your most sincere well-wisher,
LURIDA VINCENT.

Euthymia had carried off this letter and read it by herself. As she
finished it, her feelings found expression in an old phrase of her
grandmother's, which came up of itself, as such survivals of early days
are apt to do, on great occasions.

"Well, I never!"

Then she loosened some button or string that was too tight, and went to
the window for a breath of outdoor air. Then she began at the beginning
and read the whole letter all over again.

What should she do about it? She could no