volumes--and those of the amplest--will contain the History of Human
Error. However, we are far in the fourth, and one must not hurry
Minerva.

My father is enchanted with Uncle Jack's "noble conduct," as he
calls it; but he scolds me for taking the money, and doubts as to
the propriety of returning it. In these matters my father is quite as
Quixotical as Roland. I am forced to call in my mother as umpire between
us, and she settles the matter at once by an appeal to feeling. "Ah,
Austin! do you not humble me if you are too proud to accept what is due
to you from my brother?"

"Velit, nolit, quod amica," answered my father, taking off and rubbing
his spectacles,--"which means, Kitty, that when a man's married he has
no will of his own. To think," added Mr. Caxton, musingly, "that in this
world one cannot be sure of the simplest mathematical definition. You
see, Pisistratus, that the angles of a triangle so decidedly scalene as
your Uncle Jack's may be equal to the angles of a right-angled triangle
after all!" (2)

The long privation of books has quite restored all my appetite for them.
How much I have to pick up; what a compendious scheme of reading I and
my father chalk out! I see enough to fill up all the leisure of life.
But, somehow or other, Greek and Latin stand still; nothing charms
me like Italian. Blanche and I are reading Metastasio, to the great
indignation of my father, who calls it "rubbish," and wants to
substitute Dante. I have no associations at present with the souls

"Che son contenti
Nel fuoco;"

I am already one of the "beate gente." Yet, in spite of Metastasio,
Blanche and I are not so intimate as cousins ought to be. If we are by
accident alone, I become as silent as a Turk, as formal as Sir Charles
Grandison. I caught myself calling her Miss Blanche the other day.

I must not forget thee, honest Squills, nor thy delight at my health
and success, nor thy exclamation of pride (one hand on my pulse and the
other griping hard the "ball" of my arm)! "It all comes of my citrate
of iron: nothing like it for children; it has an effect on the cerebral
developments of hope and combativeness." Nor can I wholly omit mention
of poor Mrs. Primmins, who still calls me "Master Sisty," and is
breaking her heart that I will not wear the new flannel waistcoats she
had such pleasure in making,--"Young gentlemen just growing up are so
apt to go off in a galloping 'sumption! She knew just such anoth