her. What might have been, but for Lilly whom no stranger could supplant in her affections, romance doth not say. She was too happy now to desire any change.
When Lilly was three years old her father painted her picture, which was a source of great delight to them both. She would steal softly into his room and look over his shoulder when busily engaged upon it, arid without interrupting him by a single word stand perhaps half an hour, when, giving him a kiss and receiving one in return, she glided out as still as she glided in.
Halcyon days were those, fitting scenes for a novelest to dwell upon. In the reality of life there is so much of pain ai)d sorrow to sicken the soul, one turns with irrepressible longing to a fairer world, whore affection, divinely commissioned of heaven, has power to assuage many a sorrow and heal many a pain. Such homes do exist in real life, sufficient to show that we can form no ideal so high even in romance, as to be unattainable. The ideal is the divine part of our nature and it is in striving to make it real that progress is made.
The function of the novelist, however trifling or detrimental it may seem to the prosaic mind, is an important one. Through the fascinating power thus wielded over others a great influence may be exerted to elevate the moral tone of society by presenting pictures of domestic life that shall array the merits and demerits of virtues and vices, delineating those delicate threadings among the counter currents of passions and emotions that control the individual, which escape the observation in actual life.
