s notes, and came to the tea-table,
which only waited its presiding deity. My Uncle Roland, with his usual
gallantry, started up, kettle in hand (our own urn--for we had one--not
being yet unpacked), and having performed with soldier-like method the
chivalrous office thus volunteered, he joined me at my employment, and
said,--

"There is a better steel for the hands of a well-born lad than a
carpenter's plane."

"Aha! Uncle--that depends--"

"Depends! What on?"

"On the use one makes of it. Peter the Great was better employed in
making ships than Charles XII. in cutting throats."

"Poor Charles XII.!" said my uncle, sighing pathetically; "a very brave
fellow!"

"Pity he did not like the ladies a little better!"

"No man is perfect!" said my uncle, sententiously. "But, seriously, you
are now the male hope of the family; you are now-" My uncle stopped, and
his face darkened. I saw that he thought of his son,--that mysterious
son! And looking at him tenderly, I observed that his deep lines had
grown deeper, his iron-gray hair more gray. There was the trace of
recent suffering on his face; and though he had not spoken to us a word
of the business on which he had left us, it required no penetration to
perceive that it had come to no successful issue.

My uncle resumed: "Time out of mind, every generation of our house has
given one soldier to his country. I look round now: only one branch is
budding yet on the old tree; and--"

"Ah! uncle. But what would they say? Do you think I should not like to
be a soldier? Don't tempt me!"

My uncle had recourse to his snuff-box; and at that
moment--unfortunately, perhaps, for the laurels that might otherwise
have wreathed the brows of Pisistratus of England--private conversation
was stopped by the sudden and noisy entrance of Uncle Jack. No
apparition could have been more unexpected.

"Here I am, my dear friends. How d'ye do; how are you all? Captain de
Caxton, yours heartily. Yes, I am released, thank Heaven! I have given
up the drudgery of that pitiful provincial paper. I was not made for it.
An ocean in a tea cup! I was indeed! Little, sordid, narrow interests;
and I, whose heart embraces all humanity,--you might as well turn a
circle into an isolated triangle."

"Isosceles!" said my father, sighing as he pushed aside his notes, and
very slowly becoming aware of the eloquence that destroyed all chance
of further progress that night in the Great Book. "'Isosceles' tria