an, with no earnestness of feeling. As for Nelly, she
clasps your arm with a fondness, and with a pride, that tell at every
step her praises and her love.

But even this, true and healthful as it is, fades before a single word
of commendation from the new arbitress of your feeling. You have seen
Miss Dalton! You have met her on that last evening of your cloistered
life in all the elegance of ball-costume; your eye has feasted on her
elegant figure, and upon her eye sparkling with the consciousness of
beauty. You have talked with Miss Dalton about Byron, about Wordsworth,
about Homer. You have quoted poetry to Miss Dalton; you have clasped
Miss Dalton's hand!

Her conversation delights you by its piquancy and grace; she is quite
ready to meet you (a grave matter of surprise!) upon whatever subject
you may suggest. You lapse easily and lovingly into the current of her
thought, and blush to find yourself vacantly admiring when she is
looking for reply. The regard you feel for her resolves itself into an
exquisite mental love, vastly superior, as you think, to any other kind
of love. There is no dream of marriage as yet, but only of sitting
beside her in the moonlight during a countless succession of hours, and
talking of poetry and nature, of destiny and love.

Magnificent Miss Dalton!

----And all the while vaunting youth is almost mindless of the presence
of that fond Nelly whose warm sisterly affection measures itself
hopefully against the proud associations of your growing years,--and
whose deep, loving eye, half suffused with its native tenderness, seems
longing to win you back to the old joys of that Home-love, which linger
on the distant horizon of your boyhood like the golden glories of a
sinking day.

As the night wanes, you wander for a last look toward the dingy walls
that have made for you so long a home. The old broken expectancies, the
days of glee, the triumphs, the rivalries, the defeats, the friendships,
are recalled with a fluttering of the heart that pride cannot wholly
subdue. You step upon the chapel-porch in the quiet of the night as you
would step on the graves of friends. You pace back and forth in the wan
moonlight, dreaming of that dim life which opens wide and long from the
morrow. The width and length oppress you: they crush down your
struggling self-consciousness like Titans dealing with Pygmies. A single
piercing thought of the vast and shadowy future, which is so near, tears
off on the