o receive." Now, in love, there are ten receivers to one
giver. There are ten persons in this world who like to be loved and
love love, where there is one who knows _how to love_. That, O my dear
ladies, is a nobler attainment than all your French and music and
dancing. You may lose the very power of it by smothering it under a
load of early self-indulgence. By living just as you are all wanting
to live,--living to be petted, to be flattered, to be admired, to be
praised, to have your own way, and to do only that which is easy and
agreeable,--you may lose the power of self-denial and self-sacrifice;
you may lose the power of loving nobly and worthily, and become a mere
sheet of blotting-paper all your life.

You will please to observe that, in all the married life of these two,
as thus far told, all the accommodations, compliances, changes, have
been made by John for Lillie.

_He_ has been, step by step, giving up to her his ideal of life, and
trying, as far as so different a nature can, to accommodate his to
hers; and she accepts all this as her right and due.

She sees no particular cause of gratitude in it,--it is what she
expected when she married. Her own specialty, the thing which she has
always cultivated, is to get that sort of power over man, by which she
can carry her own points and purposes, and make him flexible to her
will; nor does a suspicion of the utter worthlessness and selfishness
of such a life ever darken the horizon of her thoughts.

John's bills were graver than he expected. It is true he was rich; but
riches is a relative term. As related to the style of living hitherto
practised in his establishment, John's income was princely, and left
a large balance to be devoted to works of general benevolence; but he
perceived that, in this year, that balance would be all absorbed; and
this troubled him.

Then, again, his establishment being now given up by his sister must
be reorganized, with Lillie at its head; and Lillie declared in the
outset that she could not, and would not, take any trouble about any
thing.

"John would have to get servants; and the servants would have to see
to things:" she "was resolved, for one thing, that she wasn't going to
be a slave to house-keeping."

By great pains and importunity, and an offer of high wages, Grace and
John retained Bridget in the establishment, and secured from New York
a seamstress and a waitress, and other members to make out a domestic
staff.