thanks for all you have done for me. You have made a family
comfortable and happy for life, and, by my trowel and hammer, I will
forever pray for your majesty's reverence! However, plaze your
majesty, _the instrument I have safe here_, which the prince wasn't
able to _make out_; and in all my expayrience I never yet met with one
that answered my purpose better than the Khur enein khur, agus khaoun
enein khaoun.

THE GUBBAUN SEARE.'"

EDITH MAURICE.

BY T. S. ARTHUR.

[SEE ENGRAVING.]

How many beautiful, lovely-minded women do we meet in society, who are
united, by marriage contract, with men whose tastes, habits and
characters, cannot but be in every way uncongenial. And on the other
hand, how often do we see the finest specimens of men unequally joined
to women who seem to have no true appreciation of what is really
excellent in morals or social life. The reason for such inequality is
very apparent to all who observe with any intelligence. The affinities
which govern among those who enter life's dazzling arena, are, in most
cases, external instead of internal. Accomplishment, personal
appearance, and family connections, are more considered than qualities
of the heart. Beauty, wit, station and wealth, are the standards of
value, while real merit is not thought of or fondly believed to exist
as a natural internal correspondent of the external attractions so
pleasant to behold. In this false and superficial mode of estimating
character lies the bane of domestic happiness. Deceived by the merest
externals, young persons come together and enter into the holiest
relation of life, to discover, alas! in a few years, that there exists
no congeniality of taste, no mutual appreciation of what is excellent
and desirable in life, and, worse than all, no mutual affection, based
upon clearly seen qualities of the mind. Unhappiness always follows
this sad discovery, and were it not for the love of children, which
has come in to save them, hundreds and thousands, who, in the eyes of
the world, appear to live happily together, would be driven angrily
asunder.

Aunt Esther, whose own experience in life, confirmed by much
observation, made the evil here indicated as clear as noonday to her
perceptions, saw the error of her beautiful niece, Edith, in courting
rather than shunning observation while in society.

"You wrong yourself, dear," she would often say, "by this over