We have two or three young people with us who stand a fair chance of
furnishing us the element without which life and tea-tables alike are
wanting in interest. We are all, of course, watching them, and curious
to know whether we are to have a romance or not. Here is one of them;
others will show themselves presently.

I cannot say just how old the Tutor is, but I do not detect a gray hair
in his head. My sight is not so good as it was, however, and he may have
turned the sharp corner of thirty, and even have left it a year or two
behind him. More probably he is still in the twenties,--say twenty-eight
or twenty-nine. He seems young, at any rate, excitable, enthusiastic,
imaginative, but at the same time reserved. I am afraid that he is a
poet. When I say "I am afraid," you wonder what I mean by the
expression. I may take another opportunity to explain and justify it; I
will only say now that I consider the Muse the most dangerous of sirens
to a young man who has his way to make in the world. Now this young man,
the Tutor, has, I believe, a future before him. He was born for a
philosopher,--so I read his horoscope,--but he has a great liking for
poetry and can write well in verse. We have had a number of poems
offered for our entertainment, which I have commonly been requested to
read. There has been some little mystery about their authorship, but it
is evident that they are not all from the same hand. Poetry is as
contagious as measles, and if a single case of it break out in any social
circle, or in a school, there are certain to be a number of similar
cases, some slight, some serious, and now and then one so malignant that
the subject of it should be put on a spare diet of stationery, say from
two to three penfuls of ink and a half sheet of notepaper per diem. If
any of our poetical contributions are presentable, the reader shall have
a chance to see them.