And just as in conversation all attempt at eloquence and personal
celebration in this kind is rigidly proscribed, so in letter-writing are
all kinds of fine-writing and rhetoric. "Brilliant speakers and
writers," it has been well said, "should remember that coach wheels are
better than Catherine wheels to travel on." One's first business, in
letter-writing is to say what one has to say, and the second to say it
well and with taste and ease.

A.H. JAPP, LL.D.




THE SILENT CHIMES.

SILENT FOR EVER.


Breakfast was on the table in Mr. Hamlyn's house in Bryanstone Square,
and Mrs. Hamlyn waited, all impatience, for her lord and master. Not in
any particular impatience for the meal itself, but that she might "have
it out with him"--the phrase was hers, not mine, as you will see
presently--in regard to the perplexity existing in her mind connected
with the strange appearance of the damsel watching the house, in her
beauty and her pale golden hair.

Why had Philip Hamlyn turned sick and faint--to judge by his changing
countenance--when she had charged him at dinner, the previous evening,
with knowing something of this mysterious woman? Mysterious in her
actions, at all events; probably in herself. Mrs. Hamlyn wanted to know