iliar substance
underneath will be greeted none the less kindly; nay, the observer
will perhaps regard the disguise as an oblique compliment to his
powers of insight, and his attention may thus be better secured than
had the subject worn its every-day dress. Seriously, the most
matter-of-fact life has moods when the light of romance seems to gild
its earthen chimney-pots into fairy minarets; and, were the
story-teller but sure of laying his hands upon the true gold, perhaps
the more his story had of it, the better.

Here, however, comes in the grand difficulty; fact nor fancy is often
reproduced in true colors; and while attempting justly to combine
life's elements, the writer has to beware that they be not mere cheap
imitations thereof. Not seldom does it happen that what he proffers as
genuine arcana of imagination and philosophy affects the reader as a
dose of Hieroglyphics and Balderdash. Nevertheless, the first duty of
the fiction-monger--no less than of the photographic artist doomed to
produce successful portraits of children-in-arms--is, to be amusing;
to shrink at no shifts which shall beguile the patient into
procrastinating escape until the moment be gone by. The gentle reader
will not too sternly set his face against such artifices, but, so they
go not the length of fantastically presenting phenomena inexplicable
upon any common-sense hypothesis, he will rather lend himself to his
own beguilement. The performance once over, let him, if so inclined,
strip the feathers from the flights of imagination, and wash the color
from the incidents; if aught save the driest and most ordinary matters
of fact reward his researches, then let him be offended!

_De te fabula_ does not apply here, my dear friend; for you will show
me more indulgence than I have skill to demand. And should you find
matter of interest in this book, yours, rather than the author's, will
be the merit. As the beauty of nature is from the eye that looks upon
her, so would the story be dull and barren, save for the life and
color of the reader's sympathy.

Yours most sincerely,

JULIAN HAWTHORNE.

IDOLATRY

I.

THE ENCHANTED RING.

One of the most imposing buildings in Boston twenty years ago was a
granite hotel, whose western windows looked upon a graveyard. Passing
up a flight of steps, and beneath a portico of dignified granite
columns, and so through an embarrassing pair of swinging-doors to the
roomy vestibule,--you wo