ch. Their education has been like those iron suits of
armor into which little boys were put in the Middle Ages, solid,
inflexible, put on in childhood, enlarged with every year's growth, till
the warm human frame fitted the mould as if it had been melted and
poured into it. A person educated in this way is hopelessly crippled,
never will be what he might have been."

"Oh, don't say that, Chris; think of John; think how good he is."

"I do think how good he is,"--with indignation,--"and how few know it,
too. I think, that, with the tenderest, truest, gentlest heart, the
utmost appreciation of human friendship, he has passed in the world for
a cold, proud, selfish man. If your frank, impulsive, incisive nature
had not unlocked gates and opened doors, he would never have known the
love of woman: and now he is but half disenchanted; he every day tends
to go back to stone."

"But I sha'n't let him; oh, indeed, I know the danger! I shall bring him
out. I shall work on them all. I know they are beginning to love me a
good deal: in the first place, because I belong to John, and everything
belonging to him is perfect; and in the second place,"----

"In the second place, because they expect to weave, day after day, the
fine cobweb lines of their cold system of repression around you, which
will harden and harden, and tighten and tighten, till you are as stiff
and shrouded as any of them. You remind me of our poor little duck:
don't you remember him?"

"Yes, poor fellow! how he would stay out, and swim round and round,
while the pond kept freezing and freezing, and his swimming-place grew
smaller and smaller every day; but he was such a plucky little fellow
that"----

"That at last we found him one morning frozen tight in, and he has
limped ever since on his poor feet."

"Oh, but I won't freeze in," she said, laughing.

"Take care, Emmy! You are sensitive, approbative, delicately organized;
your whole nature inclines you to give way and yield to the nature of
those around you. One little lone duck such as you, however
warm-blooded, light-hearted, cannot keep a whole pond from freezing.
While you have any influence, you must use it all to get John away from
these surroundings, where you can have him to yourself."

"Oh, you know we are building our house; we shall go to housekeeping
soon."

"Where? Close by, under the very guns of this fortress, where all your
housekeeping, all your little management, will be subject to d