there until he was twenty, out of the sight of his
kindred and acquaintances."

"Up to twenty-one he is an unmitigable nuisance!" concluded the belle,
with the vanity of one who has put the case smartly.

The lad listened to the tirade without the twitch of a
muscle--stolidity that proved him to be well used to such flaying.
Three out of four boys in that family "turned out badly," and were
cried down by a scandalized community for disgracing a decent and
godly ancestry. Hearing this, I recollected the beauty and the barrel,
and speculated sadly whether or not this were the key to the enigma.

It generally happens that the grown-up sister has less patience with
the growing brother than any other member of the household. From
principle and from inclination, and, I am inclined to add, from
nature, she "sits upon" Boy habitually.

Ungrateful Lady Mary Wortley Montagu called her quondam lover,
Alexander Pope--

"A sign-post likeness of the human race:
That is, at once resemblance and disgrace."

In her visions of the coming man, the sister resents the truth that
Boy belongs to the same species and sex, or persists in judging him by
this standard. In the "freshness" of his age and kind, he is skeptical
as to her good looks and other fascinations, and takes wicked
satisfaction in giving her to understand that he, at least, "is not
fooled by her tricks and manners." If her "nagging" is a thorn under
his jacket, his cool disdain is a grain of sand inside of her slipper.

What looks like natural antipathy between big sisters and little
brothers is but one of several reasons why home is so often less like
home to the boys than to the rest of the family.

I have in my mind's eye a distinct picture of the quarters allotted to
a promising college-lad in the mansion of a wealthy father, and which
I saw by accident. Each of the three accomplished sisters had her own
bed-chamber, fitted up according to her taste. A spacious sitting-room
on the second floor, with windows on the sunny front and at the side,
was common to the trio. There were flowers, workstands, desks, easels,
bookshelves, lounging and sewing chairs, pictures selected by each;
_portieres_ in the doorways and costly rugs upon the polished floor.
Up two flights of stairs, _on the same floor with the servants_, the
brother was domiciled in a low-browed, sunless back-room, overlooking
kitchen-yards and roofs. A dingy ingrain carpet was worn thin in
numerous