eps a deal of mischief from coming up out of the earth,
and, with a dash off of it in summer, just to cool the soles of the feet
when it gets too hot, is the best place for many constitutions, as some
few practical people have already discovered. And just so these beauties
that grow and ripen against the city-walls, these young fellows with
cheeks like peaches and young girls with cheeks like nectarines, show
that the most perfect forms of artificial life can do as much for the
human product as garden-culture for strawberries and blackberries.

If Mr. Bernard had philosophized or prosed in this way, with so pretty,
nay, so lovely a neighbor as Miss Letty Forester waiting for him to
speak to her, he would have to be dropped from this narrative as a
person unworthy of his good-fortune, and not deserving the kind reader's
further notice. On the contrary, he no sooner set his eyes fairly on her
than he said to himself that she was charming, and that he wished she
were one of his scholars at the Institute. So he began talking with her
in an easy way; for he knew something of young girls by this time, and,
of course, could adapt himself to a young lady who looked as if she
might be not more than fifteen or sixteen years old, and therefore
could hardly be a match in intellectual resources for the seventeen and
eighteen year-old first-class scholars of the Apollinean Institute.
But city-wall-fruit ripens early, and he soon found that this girl's
training had so sharpened her wits and stored her memory, that he need
not be at the trouble to stoop painfully in order to come down to her
level.

The beauty of good-breeding is that it adjusts itself to all relations
without effort, true to itself always, however the manners of those
around it may change. Self-respect and respect for others,--the
sensitive consciousness poises itself in these as the compass in the
ship's binnacle balances itself and maintains its true level within the
two concentric rings that suspend it on their pivots. This thoroughbred
school-girl quite enchanted Mr. Bernard. He could not understand where
she got her style, her way of dress, her enunciation, her easy manners.
The minister was a most worthy gentleman, but this was not the Rockland
native-born manner; some new element had come in between the good,
plain, worthy man and this young girl, fit to be a Crown Prince's
partner where there were a thousand to choose from.

He looked across to Helen Barley,