en he arrives at the practical age in
which he cannot sit for six hours at a stretch musing on the divine
essence; and rheumatism or other ailments forbid his adventure into
the wilds of Africa as a missionary? At that age, Nature, which will
be heard, Mr. Chillingly, demands her rights. A sympathizing female
companion by one's side; innocent little children climbing one's
knee,--lovely, bewitching picture! Who can be Goth enough to rub it out,
who fanatic enough to paint over it the image of a Saint Simeon sitting
alone on a pillar? Take another glass. You don't drink enough, Mr.
Chillingly."

"I have drunk enough," replied Kenelm, in a sullen voice, "to think I
see double. I imagined that before me sat the austere adversary of the
insanity of love and the miseries of wedlock. Now, I fancy I listen to
a puling sentimentalist uttering the platitudes which the other Decimus
Roach had already refuted. Certainly either I see double, or you amuse
yourself with mocking my appeal to your wisdom."

"Not so, Mr. Chillingly. But the fact is, that when I wrote that book
of which you speak I was young, and youth is enthusiastic and one-sided.
Now, with the same disdain of the excesses to which love may hurry weak
intellects, I recognize its benignant effects when taken, as I before
said, rationally,--taken rationally, my young friend. At that period
of life when the judgment is matured, the soothing companionship of
an amiable female cannot but cheer the mind, and prevent that morose
hoar-frost into which solitude is chilled and made rigid by increasing
years. In short, Mr. Chillingly, having convinced myself that I erred
in the opinion once too rashly put forth, I owe it to Truth, I owe it to
Mankind, to make my conversion known to the world. And I am about next
month to enter into the matrimonial state with a young lady who--"

"Say no more, say no more, Mr. Roach. It must be a painful subject to
you. Let us drop it."

"It is not a painful subject at all!" exclaimed Mr. Roach, with warmth.
"I look forward to the fulfilment of my duty with the pleasure which
a well-trained mind always ought to feel in recanting a fallacious
doctrine. But you do me the justice to understand that of course I do
not take this step I propose--for my personal satisfaction. No, sir,
it is the value of my example to others which purifies my motives and
animates my soul."

After this concluding and noble sentence, the conversation drooped. Host
and