oung lady was ashamed of her laughter; but she was
deeply indebted to it, for never was mind made so clear by that
beneficent exercise.

ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:

Adversary at once offensive and helpless provokes brutality
Causes him to be popularly weighed
Distinguished by his not allowing himself to be provoked
Eccentric behaviour in trifles
Excited, glad of catastrophe if it but killed monotony
Generally he noticed nothing
Good jokes are not always good policy
I make a point of never recommending my own house
Indulged in their privilege of thinking what they liked
Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies?
Lend him your own generosity
Men love to boast of things nobody else has seen
Naughtily Australian and kangarooly
Not in love--She was only not unwilling to be in love
Rich and poor 's all right, if I'm rich and you're poor
She began to feel that this was life in earnest
She dealt in the flashes which connect ideas
She sought, by looking hard, to understand it better
Sunning itself in the glass of Envy
That which fine cookery does for the cementing of couples
The intricate, which she takes for the infinite
Tossed him from repulsion to incredulity, and so back
Two principal roads by which poor sinners come to a conscience

THE GENTLEMAN OF FIFTY AND THE DAMSEL OF NINETEEN

(An early uncompleted and hitherto unpublished fragment.)

By GEORGE MEREDITH

CHAPTER I

HE

Passing over Ickleworth Bridge and rounding up the heavily-shadowed river
of our narrow valley, I perceived a commotion as of bathers in a certain
bright space immediately underneath the vicar's terrace-garden steps. My
astonishment was considerable when it became evident to me that the vicar
himself was disporting in the water, which, reaching no higher than his
waist, disclosed him in the ordinary habiliments of his cloth. I knew my
friend to be one of the most absent-minded of men, and my first effort to
explain the phenomenon of his appearance there, suggested that he might
have walked in, the victim of a fit of abstraction, and that he had not
yet fully comprehended his plight; but this idea was dispersed when I
beheld the very portly lady, his partner in joy and adversity, standing
immersed, and perfectly attired, some short distance nearer to the bank.
As I advanced along the bank o