od graces; Cadenus--old and
savage--leading captive Stella and Vanessa; and then the stray line of
a ballad,--"And a winning tongue had he,"--as much as to say, it isn't
looks, after all, but cunning words, that win our Eves over,--just as
of old, when it was the worst-looking brute of the lot that got our
grandmother to listen to his stuff, and so did the mischief.

Ah, dear me! We rehearse the part of Hercules with his club, subjugating
man and woman in our fancy, the first by the weight of it, and the
second by our handling of it,--we rehearse it, I say, by our own
hearth-stones, with the _cold_ poker as our club, and the exercise is
easy. But when we come to real life, the poker is _in the fire_, and,
ten to one, if we would grasp it, we find it too hot to hold;--lucky for
us, if it is not white-hot, and we do not have to leave the skin of our
hands sticking to it when we fling it down or drop it with a loud or
silent cry!

--I am frightened when I find into what a labyrinth of human character
and feeling I am winding. I meant to tell my thoughts, and to throw in
a few studies of manner and costume as they pictured themselves for
me from day to day. Chance has thrown together at the table with me a
number of persons who are worth studying, and I mean not only to look
on them, but, if I can, through them. You can get any man's or woman's
secret, whose sphere is circumscribed by your own, if you will only look
patiently on them long enough. Nature is always applying her reagents
to character, if you will take the pains to watch her. Our studies
of character, to change the image, are very much like the surveyor's
triangulation of a geographical province. We get a base-line in
organization, always; then we get an angle by sighting some distant
object to which the passions or aspirations of the subject of our
observation are tending; then another:--and so we construct our first
triangle. Once fix a man's ideals, and for the most part the rest is
easy. _A_ wants to die worth half a million. Good. _B_ (female) wants to
catch him,--and outlive him. All right. Minor details at our leisure.

What is it, of all your experiences, of all your thoughts, of all your
misdoings, that lies at the very bottom of the great heap of acts of
consciousness which make up your past life? What should you most dislike
to tell your nearest friend?--Be so good as to pause for a brief space,
and shut the pamphlet you hold with your fingers betw