was its most perfect gem. The full moon, verily the eye of heaven, looked intermittently down upon the earth between waves of foamy clouds that beat upon the shore of nowhere. The air was like a cool bandage on a fevered brow, and the odour of the pines was as incense to me, a worshipper. "There is but one temple in the universe and that is the body of man." So you see at present I am my own place of worship. The future has no interest for me. We all of us in this world walk forward in "company front" with our noses pressed against the veil of the future not one can withdraw his nose the millionth of a second, nor one advance his the millionth of an inch; only as time recedes can we step forward. I am too wise to wish the curtain raised, or rendered transparent, and too contented to make futile guesses.

Hitherto I have been a man without any special interest, and a man without an interest in life is like a picture without a background. In my case this is now remedied.

I found her seated on the porch - the moon was evidently as much in love with her as I, but pluckier, for it left no part of her untouched. She rose to greet me, and said:

I am glad you have come, as I wish to

tell you before you even ask, that I give myself to you, that I am completely and wholly yours, that that man whom I am still compelled to call my husband shall never be more to me than an ugly memory."

I raised her hand to my lips and said, "This betokens submission," then bending down I kissed her reverently on the forehead," and this in behalf of all there is good in me a benediction." On her eyes next

I placed the kiss of peace, next to love, God's greatest gift. On either cheek one of friendship, and whispered, "Without friendship love is without endurance." Then on her lips a kiss, but I spoke notthe kiss spake for itself.

Good night, old man, the sun is peeping over the rim of the earth as I write, and I wish to sleep, that I may dream.

Yours,

DOUGLAS.

THIRTEENTH LETTER

Shady Side of Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Mass.

DEAR DOUGLAS:

Bob, Katharine, and Cynthia are just returned from Boston's Babylon, New York. "Coming out" seems to me a curious process. It appears to be a sort of formal introduction to idleness-gilded idleness. You meet everybody who isn't doing anything. It is a menace to health and an invitation to frivolise frivolise your soul - you champagne and terrapin yourself when you ought to be asleep, and sleep when you ought to be about your Father's business. You upset all the notions of your Puritan

ancestors, who claimed with Pericles that, "she is the best woman who is least heard of, either for good, or for evil.” You deify the unimportant, and trivialise the serious things of life. You take an innocent young girl whom you have protected from the tawny press, and from all knowledge of evil, in whose presence you have ever remembered, Maxima debetur puellis reverentia, whom you have taught the prayers of the ages and the piety of the Gospels, and you present her with the world's decalogue as follows:

"Thou shalt have one God only; who
Would be at the expense of two ?
No graven images may be

Worshipped, except the currency:
Swear not at all; for, for thy curse,
Thine enemy is none the worse:

At church on Sunday to attend

Will serve to keep the world thy friend:
Honour thy parents; that is, all

From whom advancement may befall :