-changers, knotted around the tall masts of his
goodly ships, bolted to the ore of his distant mines. He bears them to
his luxurious home, and his fond wife, his caressing children, his
troops of friends, can never strike them off. Ever and anon, as the car
of fortune sweeps by to start him from his comfortable ease, they gall
him with their remorseless restraint. You may cut the poor goat's rope
and set him free, to roam where he will; but Vanitas has forged his own
fetters, and there comes to him no blessed day of emancipation.

My dear Madam, the bright blue ether around us is traversed by a
wonderful network of these invisible bonds that hold poor human beings
to their fate. Over the green hills and over the blue waters, far, far
away they reach,--a warp and woof of multiform, expansive strands, over
which the sense of bondage moves with all the wondrous celerity of that
strange force which, on the instant, speaks the thought of the
Antipodes. You don't know that you carry about any such? Ah! it is well
that they weigh so lightly. Utter your grateful thanks, to-night, when
you seek your pillow, that the chains you wear are not galling ones. But
you are most irrevocably bound. Frank holds you fast. One of these days,
when you are most peaceful and content in your bondage, scarcely
recognized, there may come a stately tread, a fiery eye, a glowing
heart, to startle you from your quiet ease; and when you bound,
trembling and breathless in their mighty sway, you may feel the
chain--before so light--wearing its way deep into your throbbing heart.
May you never wake on the morn of that day, Madam! You don't carry any
such? Round a little white tablet, half hidden in the sighing grass, is
linked a chain which holds you, at this moment, by your inmost soul. You
are not listening to me now; for I have but touched it, and your breast
is swelling 'neath its pressure, and the tears start to your eyes at its
momentary tightness. You don't carry any such? We all carry them; and
were human ears sensitive to other than the grosser sounds of nature,
they would hear a strange music sweeping from these mystic chords, as
they tremble at the touch of time and fate.

Master Tommy seems to be tolerably free from any sort of restraint, I
acknowledge. In fact, it is he who keeps myself and Mrs. A. in the most
abject servitude. He holds our nasal appendages close to the grindstone
of his imperious will. And yet--please take him into the next