been called forth by mere trifles, yet trifles so
prettily shown, with such ease and grace, as to justify the conclusion.
He is apt at illustration and application, and has a fine memory, stored
brimfull of entertaining anecdotes, snatches of poetry, and those
thousand nothings which tell for so much in society, and which it is so
pleasant to find combined with much else that is valuable. A few
evenings since, he kept Annie and me in the library, with his agreeable
chat, till so late an hour, that Col. Donaldson, who is the least bit of
a martinet in his own family, gave some very intelligible hints to us
the next morning, at breakfast, on the value of early hours. With a
readiness and grace which I never saw surpassed, Mr. Arlington turned to
us with the exquisite apology of the poet for a like fault,

"I stay'd too late; forgive the crime;
Unheeded flew the hours.
Unnoted falls the foot of time,
Which only treads on flowers."

This evening again, as he placed a candle-screen before Annie, who,
having a headache, found the light oppressive, he said with a graceful
mixture of play and earnest, impossible to describe,

"Ah, lady! if that taper's blaze
Requires a screen to blunt its rays,
What screen, not form'd by art divine,
Shall shield us from those orbs of thine?

"But oh! let nothing intervene
Our hearts and those bright suns between;
'Tis bliss, like the bewilder'd fly
To flutter round, though sure to die."

As the others were engaged in very earnest conversation at the time, and
I was reading, he probably expected to be heard only by her to whom he
addressed himself; but a little romance, such as that of Annie and Mr.
Arlington, acted before me, interests me far more than any book, and I
brought a bright blush to Annie's cheek and a conscious smile to his
lip, by asking, "Where did you find those very apposite lines? I do not
remember to have seen them."

"Probably not, as they have never been published. They were addressed by
Anthony Bleecker, of New-York, to a belle of his day, and the lady for
whose sake, it is whispered, he lived and died a bachelor."

Our colloquy was here interrupted by Robert Dudley, who wanted to know
if we were to have no story this evening. Robert was a great lover of
stories. "Ask Mr. Arlington, Robert," said I, "I have given three
stories to his one already."

"Aunt Nancy," said Mr. Arlington, who had already begun to giv