the ground, stilly. The blue sky looks out, the sun shimmers white for
five minutes. Minnie walks rapidly, runs up the steps,--rings, and takes
into the house with her a full, fresh life, that vibrates from cellar to
attic in harmonious energy.

The afternoon wanes. Fred has dined. He takes his meerschaum from the
teapoy by his side and examines it critically. How for the color? Is it
just the right shade to stop? No. A very little darker. This is growing
quite beautiful. Almost like an agate. Which of those six is the
prettiest, after all? He thinks a seventh, which he remembers lying
on Little's mantel-piece, outdoes the whole. That of Little's was not
carved, nor silver-mounted even, and yet connoisseurs pronounced it
worth a hundred and fifty dollars. Not one of these is worth ten. He
smokes again, and looks at the cannel coal as it leaps into flame. The
room is very still; not a footfall can be heard in the house;--partly
because the doors are hung with a view to silence and the floors thickly
carpeted, and partly because there are only two servants in-doors, and
those men. The cook cannot speak English, and Fred's own man, a jewel in
his way, is taciturn to a fault. If Fred would be honest with himself,
he would acknowledge that the third-hand chatter of anybody's kitchen
would often be a delightful relief to his solitude. But then how could
he follow up his system of self-culture? That and society are quite
incompatible things. However, he yawns fearfully.

But what then? Has the man no mind, no cultivation, no taste? Things do
not indicate any such want. The walls of the room in which he is
just now lounging have their crimson and gold almost covered with
pictures,--copies of rare Murillos and Raphaels, and an original head of
a boy, by Greuze, with the lips as fresh as they were a hundred years
ago. An exquisite "Dying Stork," in bronze, stands on a bracket below