to all the clumsy attacks of the merely honest and downright--for a time;
but in the end their punishment comes, not always in the manner that their
friends predict, but none the less inevitable in one manner or another. For
they all fashion a ridiculous monster out of affectations, strivings and
falsehoods, and label it "Myself;" and in the end the monster takes breath,
and lives and crushes his despised maker, and immediately vanishes into
space.

Permit me to proceed in my usual way, and to offer you an example or two.
And I begin with HERMIONE MAYBLOOM. HERMIONE was one of a large family of
delightful daughters. Their father was the well-known Dr. MAYBLOOM, who was
Dean of Archester Cathedral. His massive and convincing volumes on _The
Fauna and Flora of the Mosaic Books in their Relation to Modern Botanical
Investigation_, must be within your recollection. It was followed, you
remember, by _The Dean's Duty_, which, being published at a time when there
was, so to speak, a boom in religious novels, was ordered by many readers
under the impression that it was likely to upset their mature religious
convictions by its assaults on orthodoxy. Their disappointment when two
stout tomes, dealing historically with the _status_ and duties of Deans,
were delivered to them, was the theme of cheerful comment amongst the
light-hearted members of the Dean's own family.

[Illustration]

Was there ever in this world so delightful a family circle as that of the
Deanery? The daughters were all pretty, but that was their smallest merit.
They were all clever, and well-read, without a tinge of the bluestocking,
and most of them were musical to the tips of their slender fingers. How
merrily their laughter used to ring across the ancient close, and how
playfully and gently they used to rally the dear learned old Dean who had