eman
say, "Doubted?"--I am the Professor. I sit in my chair with a petard
under it that will blow me through the skylight of my lecture-room, if I
do not know what I am talking about and whom I am quoting.

Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your foreheads, and
saying to yourselves that you feel a little confused, as if you had been
waltzing until things began to whirl slightly round you, is it possible
that you do not clearly apprehend the exact connection of all that I
have been saying, and its bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then.
The number of these living elements in our bodies illustrates the
incalculable multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts
accounts for those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences
in the world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in
the world of outward events, of which the presence of the young girl now
at our table, and proving to be the daughter of an old acquaintance some
of us may remember, is the special example which led me through this
labyrinth of reflections, and finally lands me at the commencement of
this young girl's story, which, as I said, I have found the time and
felt the interest to learn something of, and which I think I can tell
without wronging the unconscious subject of my brief delineation.

* * * * *

IRIS.

You remember, perhaps, in some papers published awhile ago, an odd poem
written by an old Latin tutor? He brought up at the verb _amo_, I love,
as all of us do, and by and by Nature opened her great living dictionary
for him at the word _filia_, a daughter. The poor man was greatly
perplexed in choosing a name for her. _Lucretia_ and _Virginia_ were the
first that he thought of; but then came up those pictured stories of
Titus Livius, which he could never read without crying, though he had
read them a hundred times.

--Lucretia sending for her husband and her father, each to bring one
friend with him, and awaiting them in her chamber. To them her wrongs
briefly. Let them see to the wretch, she will take care of herself. Then
the hidden knife flashes out and sinks into her heart. She slides
from her seat, and falls dying. "Her husband and her father cry
aloud."--No,--not Lucretia.

--Virginius,--a brown old soldier, father of a nice girl. She engaged
to a very promising young man. Decemvir Appius takes a violent fancy to
her,--must have her at any rate. Hi