ed for the world's seas, now rotting on the stocks. Of this one
all seems ready but the launching, of that the large keelson only has
been laid; but both alike have died unborn, and the rain falls upon
them, and the mosses grow: the sound of labor is far off, and the scene
of work is silent. Small laws make great changes; slight differences of
adjustment end quick in death. Small, now, they would seem to us; but
to the infinite mind all things small and great are alike; the spore of
rust in the ear is very slight, but a famine in the corn will shake the
world.

Pinckney's life the world called lazy; his leisure was not fruitful,
and his sixty years of life were but a gentleman's. Some slight lesion
may have caused paralysis of energy, some clot of heart's blood pressed
upon the soul: I make no doubt our doctors could diagnose it, if they
knew a little more. Tall and slender, he had a strange face, a face
with a young man's beauty; his white hair gave a charm to the rare
smile, like new snow to the spring, and the slight stoop with which he
walked was but a grace the more. In short, Pinckney was interesting.
Women raved about him; young men fell in love with him; and if he was
selfish, the fault lay between him and his Maker, not visible to other
men. There are three things that make a man interesting in his old age:
the first, being heroism, we may put aside; but the other two are
regret and remorse. Now, Mr. Pinckney's fragrance was not of remorse--
women and young men would have called it heroism: it may have been. As
much heroism as could be practiced in thirty-six years of Carlsruhe.

Why Carlsruhe? That was the keynote of inquiry; and no one knew. Old
men spoke unctuously of youthful scandals; women dreamed. I suspect
even Mrs. Pinckney wondered, about as much as the plowed field may
wonder at the silence of the autumn. But Pinckney limped gracefully
about the sleepy avenues which converge at the Grand Duke's palace,
like a wakeful page in the castle of the Sleeping Beauty. Pinckney was
a friend of the Grand Duke's, and perhaps it was a certain American
flavor persisting in his manners which made him seem the only man at
the Baden court who met his arch-serene altitude on equal terms. For
one who had done nothing and possessed little, Pinckney certainly
preserved a marvelous personal dignity. His four daughters were all
married to scions of Teutonic nobility; and each one in turn had asked
him for the Pinckney arm