ow to
apply it.

"I have been twice with Hadson and Reames, but there is nothing to be
done. They say that the town does not care for a wife's book against
her husband; they have the whole story better told, and on oath, in the
Divorce Court. A really slashing volume of a husband against his wife
might, however, take; he could say a number of things would amuse
the public, and have a large sympathy with him. These are Hadson's or
Reames's words, I don't know which, for they always talk together. How
odd that _you_ should have thought of the ballet for Clara just as I
had suggested it! Of course, till free of Ludlow, it is out of the
question. I am sorry to seal and send off such a disagreeable letter,
dear Louisa, but who knows the sad exigencies of this weary world better
than your affectionate father,

"N. Holmes.

"I accidentally heard yesterday that there was actually a Mrs. Penthony
Morris travelling somewhere in Switzerland. Washington Irving, I
believe, once chanced upon a living Ichabod Crane, when he had flattered
himself that the name was his own invention. The complication in the
present case might be embarrassing. So bear it in mind."

"Tant pie pour elle, whoever the other Mrs. Morris may be," said she,
laughing, as she folded up the letter, and half mechanically regarded
the seal. "You ought to change your crest, respectable father mine,"
muttered she; "the wags might say that your portcullis was a gallows."
And then, with a weary sigh, she closed her eyes, and fell a-thinking.

That quiet, tranquil, even-tempered category of mankind, whose present
has few casualties, and whose future is, so far as human foresight can
extend, assured to them, can form not the slightest conception of the
mingled pleasure and pain that chequer the life of "the adventurer." The
man who consents to gamble existence, has all the violent ecstasies of
joy and grief that wait on changeful fortunes.

"Shall I hit upon the right number this time? Will red win once more?
Is the run of luck good or ill, or, it may be, exhausted?" These
are questions ever rising to his mind; and what contrivance, what
preparation, what spirit of exigency do they evoke! Theirs is a
hand-to-hand conflict with Fate; they can subsidize no legions, skulk
behind no parapets; in open field must the war be carried on; and what
a cruel war it becomes when every wound festers into a crime!

This young and pretty woman, on whose fair features not a painfu