, half naked and quite ashamed, was shivering with cold
for the great honor of etiquette.

12th, seven o'clock, P.M.--On coming home this evening, I saw, standing
at the door of a house, an old man, whose appearance and features
reminded me of my father. There was the same beautiful smile, the same
deep and penetrating eye, the same noble bearing of the head, and the
same careless attitude.

I began living over again the first years of my life, and recalling to
myself the conversations of that guide whom God in his mercy had given
me, and whom in his severity he had too soon withdrawn.

When my father spoke, it was not only to bring our two minds together by
an interchange of thought, but his words always contained instruction.

Not that he endeavored to make me feel it so: my father feared
everything that had the appearance of a lesson. He used to say that
virtue could make herself devoted friends, but she did not take pupils:
therefore he was not desirous to teach goodness; he contented himself
with sowing the seeds of it, certain that experience would make them
grow.

How often has good grain fallen thus into a corner of the heart, and,
when it has been long forgotten, all at once put forth the blade and
come into ear! It is a treasure laid aside in a time of ignorance, and
we do not know its value till we find ourselves in need of it.

Among the stories with which he enlivened our walks or our evenings,
there is one which now returns to my memory, doubtless because the time
is come to derive its lesson from it.

My father, who was apprenticed at the age of twelve to one of those
trading collectors who call themselves naturalists, because they put all
creation under glasses that they may sell it by retail, had always led
a life of poverty and labor. Obliged to rise before daybreak, by turns
shop-boy, clerk, and laborer, he was made to bear alone all the work
of a trade of which his master reaped all the profits. In truth, this
latter had a peculiar talent for making the most of the labor of other
people. Though unfit himself for the execution of any kind of work, no
one knew better how to sell it. His words were a net, in which people
found themselves taken before they were aware. And since he was devoted
to himself alone, and looked on the producer as his enemy, and the
buyer as prey, he used them both with that obstinate perseverance which
avarice teaches.

My father was a slave all the week, and could cal