ronment, the world wisely makes great account of
"stock." The peasant nature, which may be a very different thing from
the peasant condition, persists, and shows itself in business affairs,
in literature, even in the artist. No marriage is wisely contracted
without consideration of "stock." The admirable qualities which make a
union one of mutual respect and enduring affection--the generosities,
the magnanimities, the courage of soul, the crystalline truthfulness,
the endurance of ill fortune and of prosperity--are commonly the
persistence of the character of the stock.

We can get on with surface weaknesses and eccentricities, and even
disagreeable peculiarities, if the substratum of character is sound.
There is no woman or man so difficult--to get on with, whatever his
or her graces or accomplishments, as the one "you don't know where to
find," as the phrase is. Indeed, it has come to pass that the highest
and final eulogy ever given to a man, either in public or private life,
is that he is one "you can tie to." And when you find a woman of that
sort you do not need to explain to the cynical the wisdom of the Creator
in making the most attractive and fascinating sex.

The traits, good and bad, persist; they may be veneered or restrained,
they are seldom eradicated. All the traits that made the great Napoleon
worshiped, hated, and feared existed in the little Bonaparte, as
perfectly as the pea-pod in the flower. The whole of the First Empire
was smirched with Corsican vulgarity. The world always reckons with
these radical influences that go to make up a family. One of the first
questions asked by an old politician, who knew his world thoroughly,
about any man becoming prominent, when there was a discussion of his
probable action, was, "Whom did he marry?"

There are exceptions to this general rule, and they are always
noticeable when they occur--this deviation from the traits of the
earliest years--and offer material fox some of the subtlest and most
interesting studies of the novelist.

It was impossible for those who met Philip Burnett after he had left
college, and taken his degree in the law-school, and spent a year, more
or less studiously, in Europe, to really know him if they had not known
the dreaming boy in his early home, with all the limitations as well as
the vitalizing influences of his start in life. And on the contrary, the
error of the neighbors of a lad in forecasting his career comes from the
fact