e like myself."

"You are too modest. My husband has a copy of your Cambridge prize
verses, and says 'the Latinity of them is quite beautiful.' I quote his
very words."

"Latin verse-making is a mere knack, little more than a proof that one
had an elegant scholar for one's tutor, as I certainly had. But it is by
special grace that a real scholar can send forth another real scholar,
and a Kennedy produce a Munro. But to return to the more interesting
question of half holidays; I declare that Clemmy is leading off your
husband in triumph. He is actually going to be Puss in the Corner."

"When you know more of Charles,--I mean my husband,--you will discover
that his whole life is more or less of a holiday. Perhaps because he is
not what you accuse yourself of being: he is not lazy; he never wishes
to be a boy once more; and taskwork itself is holiday to him. He enjoys
shutting himself up in his study and reading; he enjoys a walk with
the children; he enjoys visiting the poor; he enjoys his duties as a
clergyman. And though I am not always contented for him, though I think
he should have had those honours in his profession which have been
lavished on men with less ability and less learning, yet he is never
discontented himself. Shall I tell you his secret?"

"Do."

"He is a _Thanks-giving Man_. You, too, must have much to thank God
for, Mr. Chillingly; and in thanksgiving to God does there not blend
usefulness to man, and such sense of pastime in the usefulness as makes
each day a holiday?"

Kenelm looked up into the quiet face of this obscure pastor's wife with
a startled expression in his own.

"I see, ma'am," said he, "that you have devoted much thought to the
study of the aesthetical philosophy as expounded by German thinkers,
whom it is rather difficult to understand."

"I, Mr. Chillingly! good gracious! No! What do you mean by your
aesthetical philosophy?"

"According to aesthetics, I believe man arrives at his highest state
of moral excellence when labour and duty lose all the harshness of
effort,--when they become the impulse and habit of life; when as the
essential attributes of the beautiful, they are, like beauty, enjoyed
as pleasure; and thus, as you expressed, each day becomes a holiday: a
lovely doctrine, not perhaps so lofty as that of the Stoics, but more
bewitching. Only, very few of us can practically merge our cares and our
worries into so serene an atmosphere."

"Some do so without knowing