tter you to the petty cares and trials of your
individual existence,--if you would endeavor to forget for a season
the woes of Mrs. Gerome, and expend a little more sympathy on the
sorrows of others,--if you would resolve to lose sight of the caprices
that render you so unpopular, and make some human being happy by your
aid and kind words,--in fine, if, instead of selecting as your model
some cynical, half-insane woman like Lady Hester Stanhope, you chose
for imitation the example of noble Christian usefulness and
self-abnegation, analogous to that of Florence Nightingale, or Mrs.
Fry, you would soon find that your conscience--"

"Enough! You weary me. Dr. Grey, I thoroughly understand your motives,
and honor their purity, but I beg that you will give yourself no
further anxiety on my account. You cannot, from your religious
standpoint, avoid regarding me as worse than a heathen, and have
constituted yourself a missionary to reclaim and consecrate me. I am
not quite a cannibal, ready to devour you, by way of recompense for
your charitable efforts in my behalf, but I must assure you your
interest and sympathy are sadly wasted. Do you remember that
celebrated 'vase of Soissons,' which was plundered by rude soldiery in
Rheims, and which Clovis so eagerly coveted at the distribution of the
spoils? A soldier broke it before the king's hungry eyes, and forced
him to take the worthless mocking fragments. Even so flint-faced fate
shattered my happiness, and tauntingly offers me the ruins; but I will
none of it!"

"Trust God's overruling mercy, and those fragments, fused in the
furnace of affliction, may be remoulded and restored to you in
pristine perfection."

"Impossible! Moreover, I trust nothing but the brevity of human life,
which one day cannot fail to release me from an existence that has
proved an almost intolerable burden. You know Vogt says, 'The natural
laws are rude, unbending powers,' and I comfort myself by hoping that
they can neither be bribed nor browbeaten out of the discharge of
their duty, which points to death as 'the surest calculation that can
be made,--as the unavoidable keystone of every individual life.' A
grim consolation, you think? True; but all I shall ever receive. Dr.
Grey, in your estimation I am sinfully inert and self-indulgent; and
you conscientiously commend my idle hands to the benevolent work of
knitting socks for indigent ditchers, and making jackets for pauper
children. Now, although