s like a black frost on the delicate tips of budding trees. It
is up-hill work, as we all know, to battle with indolence and
selfishness, and self-seeking and hard-hearted worldliness. Then the
highest and holiest part of our nature has a bashfulness of its own.
It is a heavenly stranger, and easily shamed. A nimble-tongued,
skilful woman can so easily show the ridiculous side of what seemed
heroism; and what is called common-sense, so generally, is only some
neatly put phase of selfishness. Poor John needed the angel at his
elbow, to give him the caution which he is represented as giving to
Father Adam:--

"What transports thee so?
An outside?--fair, no doubt, and worthy well
Thy cherishing, thy honor, and thy love,
Not thy subjection. Weigh her with thyself,
Then value. Oft-times nothing profits more
Than self-esteem, grounded on just and right
Well managed: of that skill the more them knowest,
The more she will acknowledge thee her head,
And to realities yield all her shows."

But John had no angel at his elbow. He was a fellow with a great
heart,--good as gold,--with upward aspirations, but with slow speech;
and, when not sympathized with, he became confused and incoherent, and
even dumb. So his only way with his little pink and white empress was
immediate and precipitate flight.

Lillie ran to the window when he was gone, and saw him and Grace get
into the carriage together; and then she saw them drive to the old
Ferguson House, and Rose Ferguson came out and got in with them.
"Well," she said to herself, "he shan't do that many times more,--I'm
resolved."

No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all if we _did_ put
into words, plain and explicit, many instinctive resolves and purposes
that arise in our hearts, and which, for want of being so expressed,
influence us undetected and unchallenged. If we would say out boldly,
"I don't care for right or wrong, or good or evil, or anybody's rights
or anybody's happiness, or the general good, or God himself,--all
I care for, or feel the least interest in, is to have a good time
myself, and I mean to do it, come what may,"--we should be only
expressing a feeling which often lies in the dark back-room of the
human heart; and saying it might alarm us from the drugged sleep of
life. It might rouse us to shake off the slow, creeping paralysis of
selfishness and sin before it is for ever too late.

But Lillie was a creature who had lost the p