elf, whose divided
affections are famous in song, that he could have been blessed to share
her faithful heart, if Myrtle had not bewitched him with her unconscious
and innocent sorceries. As for poor, modest Bathsheba, she thought
nothing of herself, but was almost as much fascinated by Myrtle as if
she had been one of the sex she was born to make in love with her.

The first rival Cyprian was to encounter in his admiration of Myrtle
Hazard was Mr. Gifted Hopkins. This young gentleman had the enormous
advantage of that all-subduing accomplishment, the poetical endowment.
No woman, it is pretty generally understood, can resist the youth or
man who addresses her in verse. The thought that she is the object of a
poet's love is one which fills a woman's ambition more completely than
all that wealth or office or social eminence can offer. Do the young
millionnaires and the members of the General Court get letters from
unknown ladies, every day, asking for their autographs and photographs?
Well, then!

Mr. Gifted Hopkins, being a poet, felt that it was so, to the very depth
of his soul. Could he not confer that immortality so dear to the human
heart? Not quite yet, perhaps,--though the "Banner and Oracle" gave
him already "an elevated niche in the Temple of Fame," to quote its own
words,--but in that glorious summer of his genius, of which these spring
blossoms were the promise. It was a most formidable battery, then, which
Cyprian's first rival opened upon the fortress of Myrtle's affections.

His second rival, Mr. William Murray Bradshaw, had made a half-playful
bet with his fair relative, Mrs. Clymer Ketchum, that he would bag
a girl within twelve months of date who should unite three desirable
qualities, specified in the bet, in a higher degree than any one of the
five who were on the matrimonial programme which she had laid out for
him,--and Myrtle was the girl with whom he meant to win the bet. When a
young fellow like him, cool and clever, makes up his mind to bring down
his bird, it is no joke, but a very serious and a tolerably
certain piece of business. Not being made a fool of by any boyish
nonsense,--passion and all that,--he has a great advantage. Many a
woman rejects a man because he is in love with her, and accepts another
because he is not. The first is thinking too much of himself and his
emotions,--the other makes a study of her and her friends, and learns
what ropes to pull. But then it must be remembered