ue love. Stocks and
returns. You are rich, but I did not wish to be your bounty's pauper.
Could I beg? I had my work to do for the world, but oh! the world has no
place for souls that can only love and suffer. How many miles to
Babylon? Threescore and ten. Not so far--not near so far! Ask
starvelings--they know. I wanted to do the world good and the world has
killed me, Charles.'_"

"It frightens me," said Nathalie, as he paused.

"We will read no more," he replied sombrely. "It belongs to the
psychology of madness. To me, who knew him, there are gleams of sense in
it, and passages where the delirium of the language is only a
transparent veil on the meaning. All the remainder is devoted to what he
thought important advice to me. But it's all wild and vague. Poor--poor
George!"

The phantom still hid its face in its hands, as the doctor slowly turned
over the pages of the letter. Nathalie, bending over the leaves, laid
her finger on the last, and asked--"What are those closing sentences,
father? Read them."

"Oh! that is what he called his 'last counsel' to me. It's as wild as
the rest--tinctured with the prevailing ideas of his career. First he
says, '_Farewell--farewell_;' then he bids me take his '_counsel into
memory on Christmas day_;' then, after enumerating all the wretched
classes he can think of in the country, he says. '_These are your
sisters and your brothers--love them all_.' Here he says, '_O friend,
strong in wealth for so much good, take my last counsel. In the name of
the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind._' He goes on to
bid me '_live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering,
and the poor_;' and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or
all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends
of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is
worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything
we can gain from the world. Ah, well! poor George."

"But isn't all that true, father?" said Netty; "it seems so."

"H'm," he murmured through his closed lips. Then, with a vague smile,
folding up the letter, meanwhile, he said, "Wild words, Netty, wild
words. I've no objection to charity, judiciously given; but poor
George's notions are not mine. Every man for himself, is a good general
rule. Every man for humanity, as George has it, and in his acceptation
of the principle, would send us all to the alms-house pr