cipline which I felt his instruction
had had upon me, and inclosed a check for a considerable sum, which I
asked him to accept as a contribution towards endowing a school where
lectures should be delivered on the leading features of Moderation. I
cannot say that I did this without some scruples, on the score that I no
longer had much faith in the soundness of any of his ideas, but I
condoned the weakness with my conscience by debiting the amount to
charity. After all, he could not do much harm by his teachings, and I
hated to think that a man so earnest as he should know the bitterness of
total failure.

But my kind intentions met a cruel rebuff. On the following morning I
received a formal note in Miss Kingsley's handwriting, which stated that
Mr. Spence had desired her to say that it was impossible for him to
accept the money, and that she was my "obedient servant, Lucretia
Kingsley." My attention was called by a friend the same day to a long
item in the "Sunday Mercury," which while extolling the lecture of Mr.
Spence at my house, and announcing that among the guests was the
"authoress Miss Kingsley, who wore, etc." contained a disagreeable
comment on what was called "the lavish luxury and lack of discriminating
reverence for the best sentiments of the day, which characterized the
principal parlors."

The next time I went to see Aunt Agnes I received an explanation of this
conduct, though my name had appeared once or twice before during the
past few years in uncomplimentary paragraphs. She upbraided me at once
with a renewed attempt to divert the attention of Mr. Spence from his
labors to myself. Miss Kingsley had come to her with tears in her eyes,
and described the Babylonian influences by which I had sought to seduce
him. He had gone, she said, at the call of duty to accomplish what good
he might, but never in the whole course of his professional experience
had his words fallen on a more flinty and barren soil. And then, as if
it were not enough to flaunt in the face of my old master the
extravagances most hostile to the theories of which he was the advocate,
I had sought to tempt him with money to become a perpetual presence at
my immoderate receptions.

"Bah!" exclaimed Aunt Agnes in the ardor of her indignation, as she
finished the account of Miss Kingsley's narrative,--"bah! Trying to lead
a sober life! Tell _me_! I hear on all sides that your house has become
a hot-bed of all that is worldly and luxurious