hey fling their hearts
away on unworthy objects. Too often they pine in a secret discontent,
which spreads its leaden cloud over the morning of their youth. The
immeasurable distance between one of these delicate natures and the
average youths among whom is like to be her only choice makes one's
heart ache. How many women are born too finely organized in sense and
soul for the highway they must walk with feet unshod! Life is adjusted
to the wants of the stronger sex. There are plenty of torrents to be
crossed in its journey; but their stepping-stones are measured by the
stride of man, and not of woman.

Women are more subject than men to atrophy of the heart. So says the
great medical authority, Laennec. Incurable cases of this kind used
to find their hospitals in convents. We have the disease in New
England,--but not the hospitals. I don't like to think of it. I will not
believe our young Iris is going to die out in this way. Providence will
find her some great happiness, or affliction, or duty,--and which would
be best for her, I cannot tell. One thing is sure: the interest she
takes in her little neighbor is getting to be more engrossing than ever.
Something is the matter with him, and she knows it, and I think worries
herself about it.

I wonder sometimes how so fragile and distorted a frame has kept the
fiery spirit that inhabits it so long its tenant. He accounts for it in
his own way.

The air of the Old World is good for nothing, he said, one day.--Used
up, Sir,--breathed over and over again. You must come to this side, Sir,
for an atmosphere fit to breathe nowadays. Did not worthy Mr. Higginson
say that a breath of New England's air is better than a sup of Old
England's ale? I ought to have died when I was a boy, Sir; but I could
n't die in this Boston air,--and I think I shall have to go to New York
one of these days, when it's time for me to drop this bundle,--or to New
Orleans, where they have the yellow fever,--or to Philadelphia, where
they have so many doctors.

This was some time ago; but of late he has seemed, as I have before
said, to be ailing. An experienced eye, such as I think I may call mine,
can tell commonly whether a man is going to die, or not, long before he
or his friends are alarmed about him. I don't like it.

Iris has told me that the Scottish gift of second-sight runs in her
family, and that she is afraid she has it. Those who are so endowed
look upon a well man and see a shroud wr