on the steps to bid me welcome. There is no physiognomist like
your father of a family, or your mother with marriageable daughters.
Lavater was nothing to them, in reading the secret springs of action, the
hidden sources of all character. Had there been a good respectable bump
allotted by Spurzheim to "honorable intentions," the matter had been
all fair and easy,--the very first salute of the gentleman would have
pronounced upon his views. But, alas! no such guide is forthcoming; and the
science, as it now exists, is enveloped in doubt and difficulty. The gay,
laughing temperament of some, the dark and serious composure of others; the
cautious and reserved, the open and the candid, the witty, the sententious,
the clever, the dull, the prudent, the reckless,--in a word, every variety
which the innumerable hues of character imprint upon the human face divine
are their study. Their convictions are the slow and patient fruits of
intense observation and great logical accuracy. Carefully noting down
every lineament and feature,--their change, their action, and their
development,--they track a lurking motive with the scent of a bloodhound,
and run down a growing passion with an unrelenting speed. I have been
in the witness-box, exposed to the licensed badgering and privileged
impertinence of a lawyer, winked, leered, frowned, and sneered at with all
the long-practised tact of a _nisi prius_ torturer; I have stood before the
cold, fish-like, but searching eye of a prefect of police, as he compared
my passport with my person, and thought he could detect a discrepancy in
both,--but I never felt the same sense of total exposure as when glanced at
by the half-cautious, half-prying look of a worthy father or mother, in a
family where there are daughters to marry, and "nobody coming to woo."

"You're early, Charley," said Mr. Blake, with an affected mixture of
carelessness and warmth. "You have not had breakfast?"

"No, sir. I have come to claim a part of yours; and if I mistake not, you
seem a little later than usual."

"Not more than a few minutes. The girls will be down presently; they're
early risers, Charley; good habits are just as easy as bad ones; and, the
Lord be praised! my girls were never brought up with any other."

"I am well aware of it, sir; and indeed, if I may be permitted to take
advantage of the _apropos_, it was on the subject of one of your daughters
that I wished to speak to you this morning, and which brought