Miss Monson was too well instructed, and had
too much real taste, not to feel surprise at all this extravagance of
diction and poetry.

"I am not certain, Mr. Thurston, that I rightly understand you," she
said. "Chimborazo is not particularly low, nor are the caverns of
Kentucky so strikingly elevated."

"Ascribe it all to that fatal, heart-thrilling, hope-inspiring 'yes,'
loveliest of human females," continued Tom, kneeling with some caution,
lest the straps of his pantaloons should give way--"Impute all to your
own lucid ambiguity, and to the torments of hope that I experience.
Repeat that 'yes,' lovely, consolatory, imaginative being, and raise me
from the thrill of depression, to the liveliest pulsations of all human
acmes."

"Hang it," thought Tom, "if she stand THAT, I shall presently be
ashore. Genius, itself, can invent nothing finer."

But Julia did stand it. She admired Tom for his exterior, but the
admiration of no moderately sensible woman could overlook rodomontade
so exceedingly desperate. It was trespassing too boldly on the
proprieties to utter such nonsense to a gentlewoman, and Tom, who had
got his practice in a very low school, was doomed to discover that he
had overreached himself.

"I am not certain I quite understand you, Mr. Thurston," answered the
half-irritated, half-amused young lady; "your language is so very
extraordinary--your images so unusual--"

"Say, rather, that it is your own image, loveliest incorporation of
perceptible incarnations," interrupted Tom, determined to go for the
whole, and recalling some rare specimens of magazine eloquence--"Talk
not of images, obdurate maid, when you are nothing but an image
yourself."

"I! Mr. Thurston--and of what is it your pleasure to accuse me of being
the image?"

"O! unutterable wo--yes, inexorable girl, your vacillating 'yes' has
rendered me the impersonation of that oppressive sentiment, of which
your beauty and excellence have become the mocking reality. Alas, alas!
that bearded men,"--Tom's face was covered with hair--"Alas, alas! that
bearded men should be brought to weep over the contrarieties of womanly
caprice."

Here Tom bowed his head, and after a grunting sob or two, he raised his
handkerchief in a very pathetic manner to his face, and THOUGHT to
himself--"Well, if she stand THAT, the Lord only knows what I shall say
next."

As for Julia, she was amused, though at first she had been a little
frightened. The girl had a