the rapids of
Niagara, and with straining oar and wild prayers to Heaven, forced his
boat upward into smoother water, where the draught of the current seems
to cease, and the banks smile, and all looks beautiful, and weary from
rowing, lays by his oar to rest and dream; he knows not that under that
smooth water still glides a current, that while he dreams, is
imperceptibly but surely hurrying him back whence there is no return.

Harry was just in this perilous point; he viewed danger as long past,
his self-confidence was fully restored, and in his security he began to
neglect those lighter outworks of caution which he must still guard who
does not mean, at last, to surrender the citadel.

* * * * *

"Now, girls and boys," said Mrs. G. to her sons and daughters, who were
sitting round a centre table covered with notes of invitation, and all
the preliminary _et cetera_ of a party, "what shall we have on Friday
night?--tea, coffee, lemonade, wine? of course not."

"And why not wine, mamma?" said the young ladies; "the people are
beginning to have it; they had wine at Mrs. A.'s and Mrs. B.'s."

"Well, your papa thinks it won't do,--the boys are members of the
temperance society,--and _I_ don't think, girls, it will _do_ myself."

There are many good sort of people, by the by, who always view moral
questions in this style of phraseology--not what is right, but what will
"_do_."

The girls made an appropriate reply to this view of the subject, by
showing that Mrs. A. and Mrs. B. had done the thing, and nobody seemed
to make any talk.

The boys, who thus far in the conversation had been thoughtfully rapping
their boots with their canes, now interposed, and said that they would
rather not have wine if it wouldn't look shabby.

"But it _will_ look shabby," said Miss Fanny. "Lemons, you know, are
scarce to be got for any price, and as for lemonade made of sirup, it's
positively vulgar and detestable; it tastes just like cream of tartar
and spirits of turpentine."

"For my part," said Emma, "I never did see the harm of wine, even when
people were making the most fuss about it; to be sure rum and brandy and
all that are bad, but wine----"

"And so convenient to get," said Fanny; "and no decent young man ever
gets drunk at parties, so it can't do any harm; besides, one must have
something, and, as I said, it will look shabby not to have it."

Now, there is no imputation that young men are