rgue
to prove that selfishness is the root of all moral evil. Simeon said he
always had thought so; and his neighbors sometimes supposed that nobody
could enjoy better experimental advantages for understanding the
subject. He was one of those men who suppose themselves submissive to
the Divine will, to the uttermost extent demanded by the extreme
theology of that day, simply because they have no nerves to feel, no
imagination to conceive what endless happiness or suffering is, and who
deal therefore with the great question of the salvation or damnation of
myriads as a problem of theological algebra, to be worked out by their
inevitable _x, y, z_.

But we must not spend too much time with our analysis of character, for
matters at the tea-table are drawing to a crisis. Mrs. Jones has
announced that she does not think "_he_" can come this afternoon, by
which significant mode of expression she conveyed the dutiful idea that
there was for her but one male person in the world. And now Mrs. Katy
says, "Mary, dear, knock at the Doctor's door and tell him that tea is
ready."

The Doctor was sitting in his shady study, in the room on the other
side of the little entry. The windows were dark and fragrant with the
shade and perfume of blossoming lilacs, whose tremulous shadow, mingled
with spots of afternoon sunlight, danced on the scattered papers of a
great writing-table covered with pamphlets and heavily-bound volumes of
theology, where the Doctor was sitting.

A man of gigantic proportions, over six feet in height, and built every
way with an amplitude corresponding to his height, sitting bent over
his writing, so absorbed that he did not hear the gentle sound of
Mary's entrance.

"Doctor," said the maiden, gently, "tea is ready."

No motion, no sound, except the quick racing of the pen over the paper.

"Doctor! Doctor!"--a little louder, and with another step into the
apartment,--"tea is ready."

The Doctor stretched his head forward to a paper which lay before him,
and responded in a low, murmuring voice, as reading something.

"Firstly,--if underived virtue be peculiar to the Deity, can it be the
duty of a creature to have it?"

Here a little waxen hand came with a very gentle tap on his huge
shoulder, and "Doctor, tea is ready," penetrated drowsily to the nerve
of his ear, as a sound heard in sleep. He rose suddenly with a start,
opened a pair of great blue eyes, which shone abstractedly under the
dome of a capa