ll
covered with beautiful flowers. Into these the pupil wandered, and
Iris not unwillingly followed. Thus the teaching of heraldry by
correspondence became the most delightful interchange of letters
imaginable, set off and enriched with a curious and strange piquancy,
derived from the fact that one of them, supposed to be an elderly man,
was a young girl, ignorant of the world except from books, and the
advice given her by two old men, who formed all her society. Then, as
was natural, what was at first a kind of play, became before long a
serious and earnest confidence on the one side, and a hesitating
reception on the other.

Latterly he more than once amused himself by drawing an imaginary
portrait of her; it was a pleasing portrait, but it made her feel
uneasy.

"I know you," he said, "from your letters, but yet I want to know you
in person. I think you are a man advanced in years." Poor Iris! and
she not yet twenty-one. "You sit in your study and read; you wear
glasses, and your hair is gray; you have a kind heart and a cheerful
voice; you are not rich--you have never tried to make yourself rich;
you are therefore little versed in the ways of mankind; you take your
ideas chiefly from books; the few friends you have chosen are true and
loyal; you are full of sympathy, and quick to read the thoughts of
those in whom you take an interest." A very fine character, but it
made Iris's cheek to burn and her eyes to drop. To be sure she was not
rich, nor did she know the world; so far her pupil was right, but yet
she was not gray nor old. And, again, she was not, as he thought, a
man.

Letter-writing is not extinct, as it is a commonplace to affirm, and
as people would have us believe. Letters are written still--the most
delightful letters--letters as copious, as charming, as any of the
last century; but men and women no longer write their letters as
carefully as they used to do in the old days, because they were then
shown about, and very likely read aloud. Our letters, therefore,
though their sentences are not so balanced nor their periods so
rounded, are more real, more truthful, more spontaneous, and more
delightful than the laborious productions of our ancestors, who had to
weigh every phrase, and to think out their bon mots, epigrams, and
smart things for weeks beforehand, so that the letter might appear
full of impromptu wit. I should like, for instance, just for once, to
rob the outward or the homeward mail, in