senate the time when they would
hang in expectancy on his words, and treasure them as wisdom? Cruel,
narrow-minded, and unjust world, with whom nothing succeeds except
success!

The man who contracts a debt is never called cheat till his inability
to discharge it has been proven clearly and beyond a doubt; but he who
enters into an engagement with his own heart to gain a certain prize,
or reach a certain goal, is made a mockery and a sneer by all whose own
humble faculties represent such striving as impossible. From thoughts
like these I went on to speculate whether I should ever be able, in the
zenith of my great success, to forgive those captious and disparaging
critics who had once endeavored to damp my ardor and bar my career. I
own I found it exceedingly difficult to be generous, and in particular
to that young minx of sixteen who had dared to make a jest of my
pretensions.

I wandered along thus for hours. Many a grassy path of even sward led
through the forest, and, taking one of those which skirted the stream,
I strolled along, unconscious alike of time and place. Out of the purely
personal interests which occupied my mind sprang others, and I bethought
me with a grim satisfaction of the severe lesson Mary must have, ere
this, read Rose upon her presumption and her flippancy, telling her, in
stern accents, how behind that screen the man was standing she had dared
to make the subject of her laughter. Oh, how she blushes! what flush
of crimson shame spreads over her face, her temples, and her neck; what
large tears overflow her lids, and fall along her cheeks! I actually
pity her suffering, and am pained at her grief.

"Spare her, dear Mary!" I cry out; "after all, she is but a child. Why
blame her that she cannot measure greatness, as philosophers measure
mountains, by the shadow?"

Egotism, in every one of its moods and tenses, must have a strong
fascination. I walked on for many a mile while thus thinking, without
the slightest sense of weariness, or any want of food. The morning
glided over, and the hot noon was passed, and the day was sobering down
into the more solemn tints of coming evening, and I still loitered, or
lay in the tall grass deep in my musings.

In taking my handkerchief from my pocket, I accidentally drew forth the
priest's letter, and in a sort of half-indolent curiosity, proceeded to
read it. The hand was cramped and rugged, the writing that of a man
to whom the manual part of correspo