er own to look out
for.

Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible,
unelastic. But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running
through them, are often full of character. They come, probably enough,
from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such
strong colors. The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have
faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of
various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that
blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them
approach the character of Albinesses.

I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which,
when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany
this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius. She is
not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always
an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward
aspiration,--the elan of John of Bologna's Mercury,--a lift to them, as
if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods. I hear her
singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there
a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,--such
as can come only from the inspiration of the moment,--strangely
enough, reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little
neighbor's room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken
for those weird harmonies.

I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl. Alone,
unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses,
the centre of all the men's eyes that surround the table, watched with
jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation
of our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to
catch others in mischief when they themselves are too mature for
indiscretions, (as one sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of
Nature's gendarmerie, clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the
cheapest coat-of-mail against the shafts of the great little enemy,--so
surrounded, Iris spans this commonplace household-life of ours with her
arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a
dreary pasture with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.

These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much
as they will. The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally. The
sitting-room has its