s we sink through
the social scale. Fortunately, the virtues are more tenacious of life,
and last pretty well until we get down to the mud of absolute pauperism,
where they do not flourish greatly.

--I had almost forgotten about our boarders. As the Model of all the
Virtues is about to leave us, I find myself wondering what is the reason
we are not all very sorry. Surely we all like good persons. She is a
good person. Therefore we like her.--Only we don't.

This brief syllogism, and its briefer negative, involving the principle
which some English conveyancer borrowed from a French wit and embodied
in the lines by which _Dr. Fell_ is made unamiably immortal,--this
syllogism, I say, is one that most persons have had occasion to
construct and demolish, respecting somebody or other, as I have done for
the Model. "Pious and painefull." Why has that excellent old phrase gone
out of use? Simply because these good _painefull_ or painstaking persons
proved to be such nuisances in the long run, that the word "painefull"
came, before people thought of it, to mean _paingiving_ instead of
_painstaking_.

--So, the old fellah's off to-morrah,--said the young man John.

Old fellow?--said I,--whom do you mean?

Why, the chap that came with our little beauty,--the old boy in
petticoats.

--Now that means something,--said I to myself.--These rough young
rascals very often hit the nail on the head, if they do strike with
their eyes shut. A real woman does a great many things without knowing
why she does them; but these pattern machines mix up their intellects
with everything they do, just like men. They can't help it, no doubt;
but we can't help getting sick of them, either. Intellect is to a
woman's nature what her watch-spring skirt is to her dress; it ought
to underlie her silks and embroideries, but not to show itself too
staringly on the outside.--You don't know, perhaps, but I will tell
you;--the brain is the palest of all the internal organs, and the heart
the reddest. Whatever comes from the brain carries the hue of the place
it came from, and whatever comes from the heart carries the heat and
color of its birthplace.

The young man John did not hear my _soliloque_, of course, but sent
up one more bubble from our sinking conversation, in the form of a
statement, that she was at liberty to go to a personage who receives no
visits, as is commonly supposed, from virtuous people.

Why, I ask again, (of my reader,) should a