t of how all petty
objections were got over, or that I had elaborated a peculiarly
felicitous _tag_ which Colonel Prowley would speak at a few backs as
they disappeared into the lobby? The auditor referred to has got an
inkling of how things are to end, and can guess out the particulars as
he hurries off to his business. And here will be observed our decided
advantage in having made sure of the Moral by a vigorous assertion of
the same at the commencement of this narrative; for, thus relieved of
the necessity of a final flutter into the empyrean of ethics, we may
part company in a few easy sentences.

Although the circumstances I have set down, from being awkwardly packed
in a small compass, may not appear to fit into each other with all the
exactness of a dissecting-map, I am sure, that, as they really occurred
spread over a necessary time, they seemed natural and simple enough.
Mrs. Hunesley, Doctor Dastick's favorite niece, was the schoolmate of
Miss Kate Hurribattle, and what more likely than that she should invite
her friend to pass a few weeks with her at her summer-home in the
country? And could there be a greater necessity than that, meeting daily
as we did through those lovely August weeks, she should become--in
short, that I should marry Miss Hurribattle?

And when this foolish little romance, which had taken nebulous outline
in the fancy of Colonel Prowley, suddenly fell at his feet a serious
indubitability, the dear, delighted old gentleman was the first to
declare, that, as our engagement had existed for the last seventy years,
it certainly did not seem worth while to wait much longer. At all
events, we did not wait longer than the following Thanksgiving; since
which period my experience leads me to declare, that, if the Miss
Hurribattle of my great-great-uncle's day was at all comparable to the
member of her family I met at Foxden, my respected relative made a great
mistake in living a bachelor.

RESIGNATION.

You know how a little child of three or four years old kicks and howls,
if it do not get its own way. You know how quietly a grown-up man takes
it, when ordinary things fall out otherwise than he wished. A letter,
a newspaper, a magazine, does not arrive by the post on the morning
on which it had been particularly wished for, and counted on with
certainty. The day proves rainy, when a fine day was specially
desirable. The grown-up man is disappointed; but he soon gets reconciled
to the e