D IN THE PURSUIT OF ART AND SCIENCE.

Who has not experienced the almost unqualified pleasure of a walk, on a
bright beautiful morning, before breakfast? How amply it repays one for
the self-denying misery of getting up! We say misery advisedly, for it
is an undoubted, though short-lived, agony, that of arousing one's
inert, contented, and peaceful frame into a state of activity. There is
a moment in the daily life of man--of some men, at least--when heroism
of a very high stamp is displayed; that moment when, the appointed hour
of morning having arrived, he thrusts one lethargic toe from under the
warm bed-clothes into the relatively cold atmosphere of his chamber. If
the toe is drawn back, the man is nobody. If it is thrust further out,
and followed up by the unwilling body, the man is a hero! The agony,
however, like that of tooth-drawing, is soon over, and the delightful
commendations of an approving conscience are superadded to the pleasures
of an early morning walk.

Such pleasures were enjoyed one morning by Emma Gray and Nita Horetzki
and Lewis Stoutley, when, at an early hour, they issued from their
hotel, and walked away briskly up the Vale of Chamouni.

"I say, Emma, isn't it a charming, delicious, and outrageously
delightful day!" exclaimed Lewis.

Although the young man addressed himself to his cousin, who walked on
his left, he glanced at Nita, who walked on his right, and thus, with a
sense of justice peculiarly his own, divided his attentions equally
between them.

"You are unusually enthusiastic, cousin," said Emma, with a laugh. "I
thought you said last night that weather never affected you?"

"True, but there is more than weather here, there is scenery, and--and
sunshine."

"Sunshine?" repeated Nita, lifting her large orbs to his face with a
look of surprise, for although the sun may be said to have risen as
regards the world at large, it had not yet surmounted the range of Mont
Blanc, or risen to the inhabitants of Chamouni. "I not see it; where is
the sunshine?"

"There!" exclaimed Lewis, mentally, as he gazed straight down into her
wondering orbs, and then added aloud, as he swept his arm aloft with a
mock-heroic air, "behold it gleaming on the mountain-ridges."

There is no doubt that the enthusiasm of Lewis as to the weather,
scenery, and sunshine would have been much reduced, perhaps quenched
altogether, if Nita had not been there, for the youth was steeped in
that exquisite c