to remark, in the
classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin
Franklin, it is nullum tui negotii.

When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the
damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by
exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a
stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her
to let me join her again.

EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL.
(To be burned unread.)

I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself
to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age
which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been
low-spirited and listless, lately,--it is coffee, I think,
--(I observe that which is bought READY-GROUND never affects the
head,)--and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am
downhearted.

There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton
Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide.

There is a woman's footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest
ocean-buried inscription!

--Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no!--Yet what is this which has
been shaping itself in my soul?--Is it a thought?--is it a dream?
--is it a PASSION?--Then I know what comes next.

--The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed
corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are
iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can
stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in
those groups I sometimes meet;--and then the careful man watches
them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pass on
fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy!--B., with his arms full of
yellow weeds,--ore from the gold mines which he discovered long
before we heard of California,--Y., born to millions, crazed by too
much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,--made a
Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a
stick,--(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to
buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I
don't doubt the good people made him easy for life,)--how I
remember them all!

I recollect, as all do, the story of the Hall of Eblis, in
"Vathek," and how each shape, as it lifted its hand from its
breast, showed its heart,--a burning coal. The real Hall of Eblis
stands on yonder summit. Go there on the next visiting-day, and
ask that figu