res a lawyer to present the arguments
in favor of the view that she was another man's daughter.

There used to be lawyers in Rome that would do such things.--All right.
There are two sides to everything. _Audi alteram partem_. The legal
gentleman has no opinion,--he only states the evidence.--A doubtful
case. Let the young lady be under the protection of the Honorable
Decemvir until it can be looked up thoroughly.--Father thinks it best,
on the whole, to give in. Will explain the matter, if the young lady and
her maid will step this way. _That_ is the explanation,--a stab with a
butcher's knife, snatched from a stall, meant for other lambs than this
poor bleeding Virginia!

The old man thought over the story. Then he must have one look at the
original. So he took down the first volume and read it over. When he
came to that part where it tells how the young gentleman she was engaged
to and a friend of his took up the poor girl's bloodless shape and
carried it through the street, and how all the women followed, wailing,
and asking if that was what their daughters were coming to,--if that was
what they were to get for being good girls,--he melted down into his
accustomed tears of pity and grief, and, through them all, of delight at
the charming Latin of the narrative. But it was impossible to call his
child Virginia. He could never look at her without thinking she had a
knife sticking in her bosom.

_Dido_ would be a good name, and a fresh one. She was a queen, and the
founder of a great city. Her story had been immortalized by the greatest
of poets,--for the old Latin tutor clove to "Virgilius Maro," as he
called him, as closely as ever Dante did in his memorable journey. So
he took down his Virgil,--it was the smooth-leafed, open-lettered quarto
of Baskerville,--and began reading the loves and mishaps of Dido. It
wouldn't do. A lady who had not learned discretion by experience, and
came to an evil end. He shook his head, as he sadly repeated,

"--misera ante diem, subitoque accensa
furore";

but when he came to the lines,

"Ergo Iris croceis per coelum roscida pennis
Mille trahens varios adverso Sole colores,"

he jumped up with a great exclamation, which the particular recording
angel who heard it pretended not to understand, or it might have gone
hard with the Latin tutor some time or other.

"_Iris_ shall be her name!"--he said. So her name was Iris.

--The natural end of a tutor is to perish by