supposed her to be,--all this would not
have happened.

I am aware that this will not heighten the reader's respect for my hero.
But I fancy that the imperceptible progress of a sincere passion in the
matured strong man is apt to be marked with even more than the usual
haste and absurdity of callous youth.

The fever that runs riot in the veins of the robust is apt to pass your
ailing weakling by. Possibly there may be some immunity in inoculation.
It is Lothario who is always self-possessed and does and says the
right thing, while poor honest Coelebs becomes ridiculous with genuine
emotion.

He rejoined his lawyer in no very gracious mood. The chambers occupied
by Mr. Harlowe were in the basement of a private dwelling once occupied
and made historic by an Honorable Somebody, who, however, was remembered
only by the landlord and the last tenant. There were various shelves
in the walls divided into compartments, sarcastically known as "pigeon
holes," in which the dove of peace had never rested, but which still
perpetuated, in their legends, the feuds and animosities of suitors now
but common dust together. There was a portrait, apparently of a cherub,
which on nearer inspection turned out to be a famous English Lord
Chancellor in his flowing wig.

There were books with dreary, unenlivening titles,--egotistic always,
as recording Smith's opinions on this, and Jones's commentaries on
that. There was a hand bill tacked on the wall, which at first offered
hilarious suggestions of a circus or a steamboat excursion, but which
turned out only to be a sheriff's sale. There were several oddly-shaped
packages in newspaper wrappings, mysterious and awful in dark corners,
that might have contained forgotten law papers or the previous week's
washing of the eminent counsel. There were one or two newspapers, which
at first offered entertaining prospects to the waiting client, but
always proved to be a law record or a Supreme Court decision. There was
the bust of a late distinguished jurist, which apparently had never been
dusted since he himself became dust, and had already grown a perceptibly
dusty moustache on his severely-judicial upper lip. It was a cheerless
place in the sunshine of day; at night, when it ought, by every
suggestion of its dusty past, to have been left to the vengeful ghosts,
the greater part of whose hopes and passions were recorded and gathered
there; when in the dark the dead hands of forgotten men were str