mere matters of liking, the present object was perhaps the best liked, because more in mind. Mrs. J. would fidget a little during these confidential talks between the young people in the dusk of the afternoon, or when Elkhart, leaning over her Mary's shoulder to turn the music of some favorite air, would catch the kindly glance of those cerulean eyes, and be incited straightway to feel himself, as of old, the accepted suitor of so much loveliness. But when that exquisite Clarence arrived the tables were quickly turned. I verily believe he laid out his plan of the evening campaign during the mornings, when he had nothing better to do, and went to the extent of committing to heart daily a page or two out of an old copy of Joe Miller, one of the few books in the library our young dandy cared to kill time by reading. Whence else did he pour out such a flood of slipshod anecdote, sometimes audaciously told for his own adventures, that Miss Columbia Simmons, who was frequently present, gnawed through I don't know how many, handkerchiefs, in attempts to stifle her laughter, and Mrs. Jones came to think the narrator incomparably more talented than our hero, who, for his part, commonly sat and listened, with more philosophy and forbearance than gratification, be it said. However much his conclusions may have differed from Mrs. Jones's, he kept them to himself, and took part here and there in these conversations, on which occasions Mr. Van Trump, to show his superior station, perhaps, rather than his better breeding, usually fell to talking with some one else. In truth—and the truth will out at some time in a history such as this—a great change had been undergone since the beginning of this pastoral in the views and feelings of the young gentleman last named. He had ceased to make fun of "Mother Jones," as he had at first called her, for the entertainment of the grinning old patroon, at the breakfast-table, and some how had lost perception of the false notes in the performances upon the veteran instrument in Mrs. J.'s parlor. He did not now forget the flowers he took from Miss Mary's scarcely resisting fingers, and suffer them to perish, for want of care, in the button-hole of his coat; the glass on his bureau at home always contained one or two. He had her album to write some verses in, and was laboring with touching energy to collate some "original stanzas" which might put to
