eeking religious counsel of George Fellows," said Harrington.
"I should feel much as Jeannie Deans, when she went to the
Interpreter's House.' as Madge Wildfire calls it, in company with
that fantastical personage. But he is a kind-hearted, amiable fellow,
and, in short, I cannot help liking him."
____

July 2. Mr. Fellowes arrived this day about noon. He is about a year
younger than Harrington. The afternoon was spent very pleasantly in
general conversation. In the evening, after tea, we went into the
library. I told the two friends that, as they had doubtless much to
talk of, and as I had plenty of occupation for my pen, I would sit
down at an adjoining table with my desk, and they might go on with
their chat. They did so, and for some time talked of old college
days and on indifferent subjects; but my attention was soon
irresistibly attracted by finding them getting into conversation in
which, on Harrington's account, I felt a deeper interest. I found my
employment impossible, and yet, desiring to hear them discuss their
theological differences without constraint, I did not venture to
interrupt them. At last the distraction became intolerable; and,
looking up, I said, "Gentlemen, I believe you might talk on the most
private matters without my attending to one syllable you said; but
if you get upon these theological subjects, such is my present
interest in them," glancing at Harrington, "that I shall be
perpetually making blunders in my manuscript. Let me beg of you to
avoid them when I am with you, or let me go into another room."
Harrington would not hear of the last; and as to the first he said,
and said truly, that it would impede the free current of conversation,
"which," said he, "to be pleasurable at all, must wind hither and
thither as the fit takes us. It is like a many-stringed lyre, and
to break any one of the chords is to mar the music. And so, my good
uncle, if you find us getting upon these topics, join us; we shall
seldom be long at a time upon them. I will answer for it; or if you
will not do that, and yet, though disturbed by our chatter, are too
polite to show it, why, amuse yourself (I know your old tachygraphic
skill, which used to move my wonder in childhood), I say, amuse
yourself, or rather avenge yourself, by jotting down some fragments
of our absurdities, and afterwards showing us what a couple of fools
we have been." I was secretly delighted with the suggestion; and, when
the subjects of di