pages, he laid down the book to think
how far the voyager's experiences could apply to the daily exigencies of
a Foreign Office official, and to ask himself if he were not in
reality laying down too wide and too extensive a foundation for future
acquirement. "No," thought he, "I 'll not try to be any better or
smarter than the rest. I 'll just stick to the practical part, and here
goes for Ollendorf." Three or four sentences read,--he leaned back, and
wondered whether he would not rather undertake an excursion on foot to
Jerusalem than set out on an expedition into the French language. As
if a whole life could master that bulky dictionary, and transfer its
contents to his poor brain! To be sure, Alice knew it; but Alice could
learn what she pleased. She learned to skate in three lessons,--and
how she did it too! Who ever glided over the ice with such a grace,--so
easy, so quiet, but with such a perfection of movement! Talk of
dancing,--it was nothing to it. And could n't she ride? See her three
fields off, and you'd know the ground just by the stride of her horse.
Such a hand she had! But who was like Alice?

Ah! there was the boundless prairie, to his thoughts, on which he
might ramble forever; and on that wide swelling savannah, roaming and
straying, we shall now leave him, and turn our glance elsewhere.

The morning service of the meeting-house over, Dr. Stewart proposed to
walk home with Mrs. Butler. The exposition about Ahab had neither been
as full or as able as he had intended, but it was not his fault,--at
least, only in part his fault; the sum of which consisted in the fact
that he had broken through a good rule, which up to that hour had never
met with infraction,--he had opened a post-letter on the Sabbath-morn.
"This comes," said he, plaintively, "of letting the sinfu' things of
this warld mingle wi' the holier and higher ones of the warld to come.
Corruption is aye stronger than life; and now I maun tell you the whole
of it." If we do not strictly follow the good minister, and tell what
he had to say in his own words, it is to spare our reader some time on
a matter which may not possess the amount of interest to him it had for
the person who narrated it. The matter was this: there came that morning
a letter from Mrs. M'Gruder to Dr. Stewart,--a letter that almost
overwhelmed him. The compensation to humility of station is
generally this, that the interests of the humble man are so lowly, so
unpretending, a