ries I cited
may have more recent parallels. Have you ever met with any cases which
admitted of a solution like that which I have mentioned?

Yours very truly,

* * * * *

_Bernard Langdon to Philip Staples._

MY DEAR PHILIP,--

I have been for some months established in this place, turning the
main crank of the machinery for the manufactory of accomplishments
superintended by, or rather worked to the profit of, a certain Mr. Silas
Peckham. He is a poor wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his
body, lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed
and thin-muscled,--you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed
creatures, that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not
quite dead enough to bury. If you ever hear of my being in court to
answer to a charge of assault and battery, you may guess that I have
been giving him a thrashing to settle off old scores; for he is a
tyrant, and has come pretty near killing his principal lady-assistant
with overworking her and keeping her out of all decent privileges.

Helen Darley is this lady's name,--twenty-two or -three years old,
I should think,--a very sweet, pale woman,--daughter of the usual
country-clergyman,--thrown on her own resources from an early age, and
the rest: a common story, but an uncommon person,--very. All conscience
and sensibility, I should say,--a cruel worker,--no kind of regard for
herself,--seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try
her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel crossbow. I am
glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake. I
have saved that girl's life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her
out of the fire or water.

Of course I'm in love with her, you say,--we always love those whom
we have benefited: "saved her life,--her love was the reward of his
devotion," etc., etc., as in a regular set novel. In love, Philip? Well,
about that,--I love Helen Darley--very much: there is hardly anybody I
love so well. What a noble creature she is! One of those that just go
right on, do their own work and everybody else's, killing themselves
inch by inch without ever thinking about it,--singing and dancing
at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but
pressing steadily on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail by
the wayside to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last
falling, face down, arms st