“Do you remember how you artfully persuaded me into this intimacy?  And now you are making game of me for following your own suggestions.”

“Me?  I never suggest; I never persuade.”

“You did, you crafty old fox!  You advised me to fall in love with her.”

“Did I?  Well, I think now you have gone far enough.  A sip from the cup of enchantment is quite sufficient; you needn’t swallow the whole of it.”

“But people can’t always control themselves.  Can you trust yourself to stop this side of insensibility, when you take ether? or be sure you won’t get drunk, if you commence the evening with a party of dissipated fellows?”

“That will do, my friend.  I know there are people who are fond of confessing their weakness; don’t you do it.  Where is the supremacy of mind and will, and all that nonsense, if a man can’t amuse himself with a clever woman’s artifices without tumbling into the snare he is watching?”

“We’ll see how you succeed with the charming widow,—­whether the wise man, when his own jecur is pierced with the arrow, may not show it, as well as other people.  And by-the-by, you will have an excellent opportunity for your experiment.  Marcia and I are going to take a sail this afternoon, and you can entertain Mrs. Sandford while we are gone.”

Easelmann softly whistled.

[To be continued.]

* * * * *

THE PROFESSOR AT THE BREAKFAST-TABLE.

WHAT HE SAID, WHAT HE HEARD, AND WHAT HE SAW.

I intended to have signalized my first appearance by a certain large statement, which I flatter myself is the nearest approach to a universal formula of life yet promulgated at this breakfast-table.  It would have had a grand effect.  For this purpose I fixed my eyes on a certain divinity-student, with the intention of exchanging a few phrases, and then forcing my picture-card, namely, The great end of being.—­I will thank you for the sugar,—­I said.—­Man is a dependent creature.

It is a small favor to ask,—­said the divinity-student,—­and passed the sugar to me.

—­Life is a great bundle of little things,—­I said.

The divinity-student smiled, as if that was the concluding epigram of the sugar question.

You smile,—­I said.—­Perhaps life seems to you a little bundle of great things?

The divinity-student started a laugh, but suddenly reined it back with a pull, as one throws a horse on his haunches.—­Life is a great bundle of great things,—­he said.

(Now, then!) The great end of being, after all, is——­

Hold on!—­said my neighbor, a young fellow whose name seems to be John, and nothing else,—­for that is what they all call him,—­hold on! the Sculpin is go’n’ to say somethin’.