block for her chair, and a mound of chalk-rubble defending her from the
keen-tipped breath of the east, now and then shadowing the smooth blue
water, faintly, like reflections of a flight of gulls.

Infants are said to have their ideas, and why not young ladies? Those
who write of their perplexities in descriptions comical in their length
are unkind to them, by making them appear the simplest of the creatures
of fiction; and most of us, I am sure, would incline to believe in them
if they were only some bit more lightly touched. Those troubled
sentiments of our young lady of the comfortable classes are quite worthy
of mention. Her poor little eye poring as little fishlike as possible
upon the intricate, which she takes for the infinite, has its place in
our history, nor should we any of us miss the pathos of it were it not
that so large a space is claimed for the exposure. As it is, one has
almost to fight a battle to persuade the world that she has downright
thoughts and feelings, and really a superhuman delicacy is required in
presenting her that she may be credible. Even then--so much being
accomplished the thousands accustomed to chapters of her when she is in
the situation of Annette will be disappointed by short sentences, just as
of old the Continental eater of oysters would have been offended at the
offer of an exchange of two live for two dozen dead ones. Annette was in
the grand crucial position of English imaginative prose. I recognize it,
and that to this the streamlets flow, thence pours the flood. But what
was the plain truth? She had brought herself to think she ought to
sacrifice herself to Tinman, and her evasions with Herbert, manifested in
tricks of coldness alternating with tones of regret, ended, as they had
commenced, in a mysterious half-sullenness. She had hardly a word to
say. Let me step in again to observe that she had at the moment no
pointed intention of marrying Tinman. To her mind the circumstances
compelled her to embark on the idea of doing so, and she saw the