es lie around us in the
daily walk of life, "written not with ink, but in fleshly tables of the
heart." The dullest street of the most prosaic town has matter in it for
more smiles, more tears, more intense excitement, than ever were written
in story or sung in poem; the reality is there, of which the romancer is
the second-hand recorder.

So much of a plea we put in boldly, because we foresee grave heads
beginning to shake over our history, and doubts rising in reverend and
discreet minds whether this history is going to prove anything but a
love-story, after all.

We do assure you, right reverend Sir, and you, most discreet Madam, that
it is not going to prove anything else; and you will find, if you will
follow us, that there is as much romance burning under the snow-banks
of cold Puritan preciseness as if Dr. H. had been brought up to attend
operas instead of metaphysical preaching, and Mary had been nourished on
Byron's poetry instead of "Edwards on the Affections."

The innocent credulities, the subtle deceptions, that were quietly at
work under the grave, white curls of the Doctor's wig, were exactly of
the kind which have beguiled man in all ages, when near the sovereign
presence of her who is born for his destiny;--and as for Mary, what did
it avail her that she could say the Assembly's Catechism from end to
end without tripping, and that every habit of her life beat time to
practical realities, steadily as the parlor clock? The wildest Italian
singer or dancer, nursed on nothing but excitement from her cradle,
never was more thoroughly possessed by the awful and solemn mystery of
woman's life than this Puritan girl.

It is quite true, that, the next morning after James's departure,
she rose as usual in the dim gray, and was to be seen opening the
kitchen-door just at the moment when the birds were giving the first
little drowsy stir and chirp,--and that she went on setting the
breakfast-table for the two hired men, who were bound to the fields with
the oxen,--and that then she went on skimming cream for the butter,
and getting ready to churn, and making up biscuit for the Doctor's
breakfast, when he and they should sit down together at a somewhat later
hour; and as she moved about, doing all these things, she sung various
scraps of old psalm-tunes; and the good Doctor, who was then busy with
his early exercises of devotion, listened, as he heard the voice, now
here, now there, and thought about angels and