t wonder at this.
The Young Girl has lost what little playfulness she had in the earlier
months of my acquaintance with her. I often read her stories partly from
my interest in her, and partly because I find merit enough in them to
deserve something, better than the rough handling they got from her
coarse-fibred critic, whoever he was. I see evidence that her thoughts
are wandering from her task, that she has fits of melancholy, and bursts
of tremulous excitement, and that she has as much as she can do to
keep herself at all to her stated, inevitable, and sometimes almost
despairing literary labor. I have had some acquaintance with vital
phenomena of this kind, and know something of the nervous nature of
young women and its "magnetic storms," if I may borrow an expression
from the physicists, to indicate the perturbations to which they are
liable. She is more in need of friendship and counsel now than ever
before, it seems to me, and I cannot bear to think that the Lady, who
has become like a mother to her, is to leave her to her own guidance.

It is plain enough what is at the bottom of this disturbance. The
astronomical lessons she has been taking have become interesting enough
to absorb too much of her thoughts, and she finds them wandering to the
stars or elsewhere, when they should be working quietly in the editor's
harness.

The Landlady has her own views on this matter which she communicated to
me something as follows:

--I don't quite like to tell folks what a lucky place my boarding-house
is, for fear I should have all sorts of people crowding in to be my
boarders for the sake of their chances. Folks come here poor and they go
away rich. Young women come here without a friend in the world, and the
next thing that happens is a gentleman steps up to 'em and says, "If
you'll take me for your pardner for life, I'll give you a good home and
love you ever so much besides"; and off goes my young lady-boarder
into a fine three-story house, as grand as the governor's wife, with
everything to make her comfortable, and a husband to care for her into
the bargain. That's the way it is with the young ladies that comes to
board with me, ever since the gentleman that wrote the first book that
advertised my establishment (and never charged me a cent for it neither)
merried the Schoolma'am. And I think but that's between you and me--that
it 's going to be the same thing right over again between that young
gentleman and this y