over there?" said Reuben, as they passed on.

"Yes, my son."

"That's the theatre,--the Old Park."

The Doctor ran his eye over it, and its effigy of Shakspeare upon the
niche in the wall, as Gabriel might have looked upon the armor of
Beelzebub.

"I hope, Reuben, you never enter those doors?"

"Well, father, since Kean and Mathews are gone, there's really nothing
worth the seeing."

"Kean! Mathews!" said the Doctor, stopping in his walk and confronting
Reuben with a stern brow,--"is it possible, my son, that I hear you
talking in this familiar way of play-actors? You don't tell me that you
have been a participant in such orgies of Satan?"

"Why, father," says Reuben, a little startled by the Doctor's
earnestness, "the truth is, Aunt Mabel goes occasionally, like 'most all
the ladies; but we go, you know, to see the moral pieces, generally."

"Moral pieces! moral pieces!" says the Doctor, with a withering scowl.
"Reuben! those who go thither take hold on the door-posts of hell!"

"That's the Tract Society building yonder," said Reuben, wishing to
divert the Doctor, if possible, from the special object of his
reflections.

"Rachel's voice!--always Rachel's voice!"--said the Doctor to himself.

"Would you like to go in, father?"

"No, my son, we have no time; and yet"--meditating, and thrusting his
hand in his pocket--"there is a tract or two I would like to buy for
you, Reuben."

"Go in, then," says Reuben. "Let me tell them who you are, father, and
you can get them at wholesale prices. It's the merest song."

"No, my son, no," said the Doctor, disheartened by the blithe air of
Reuben. "I fear it would be wasted effort. Yet I trust that you do not
wholly neglect the opportunities for religious instruction on the
Sabbath?"

"Oh, no," says Reuben, gayly. "I see Dr. Mowry off and on, pretty often.
He's a clever old gentleman,--Dr. Mowry."

Clever old gentleman!

The Doctor walked on oppressed with grief,--silent, but with lips moving
in prayer,--beseeching God to take away the stony heart from this poor
child of his, and to give him a heart of flesh.

Reuben had improved, as we said, by his New York schooling. He was quick
of apprehension, well informed; and his familiarity with the
counting-room of Mr. Brindlock had given him a business promptitude
that was specially agreeable to the Doctor, whose habits in that regard
were of woful slackness. But religiously, the good man looked upon his
son as a c