namiable, nor inexplicable.

The excellent Bishop Joseph Hall, a painful preacher and solid divine of
Puritan tendencies, declares that he prefers good-nature before grace
in the election of a wife; because, saith he, "it will be a hard Task,
where the Nature is peevish and froward, for Grace to make an entire
Conquest whilst Life lasteth." An opinion apparently entertained by many
modern ecclesiastics, and one which may be considered very encouraging
to those young ladies of the politer circles who have a fancy for
marrying bishops and other fashionable clergymen. Not of course that
"grace" is so rare a gift among the young ladies of the upper social
sphere; but they are in the habit of using the word with a somewhat
different meaning from that which the good Bishop attached to it.

CHAPTER XVIII. VILLAGE POET.

It was impossible for Myrtle to be frequently at Olive's without often
meeting Olive's brother, and her reappearance with the bloom on her
cheek was a signal which her other admirers were not likely to overlook
as a hint to recommence their flattering demonstrations; and so it was
that she found herself all at once the centre of attraction to three
young men with whom we have made some acquaintance, namely, Cyprian
Eveleth, Gifted Hopkins, and Murray Bradshaw.

When the three girls were together at the house of Olive, it gave
Cyprian a chance to see something of Myrtle in the most natural way.
Indeed, they all became used to meeting him in a brotherly sort of
relation; only, as he was not the brother of two of them, it gave him
the inside track, as the sporting men say, with reference to any rivals
for the good-will of either of these. Of course neither Bathsheba nor
Myrtle thought of him in any other light than as Olive's brother, and
would have been surprised with the manifestation on his part of any
other feeling, if it existed. So he became very nearly as intimate with
them as Olive was, and hardly thought of his intimacy as anything more
than friendship, until one day Myrtle sang some hymns so sweetly that
Cyprian dreamed about her that night; and what young person does not
know that the woman or the man once idealized and glorified in the
exalted state of the imagination belonging to sleep becomes dangerous
to the sensibilities in the waking hours that follow? Yet something drew
Cyprian to the gentler and more subdued nature of Bathsheba, so that
he often thought, like a gayer personage than hims