alone, I think, that true and proud souls have stood in the world
unwelcome, and, hurt to the quick, have turned away and dumbly
died. Let it be. Their lives are not lost, thank God!

I meant only to ask you, How can I help it, if the people in my
story seem coarse to you,--if the hero, unlike all other heroes,
stopped to count the cost before he fell in love,--if it made his
fingers thrill with pleasure to touch a full pocket-book as well
as his mistress's hand,--not being withal, this Stephen Holmes, a
man to be despised? A hero, rather, of a peculiar type,--a man,
more than other men: the very mould of man, doubt it who will,
that women love longest and most madly. Of course, if I could, I
would have blotted out every meanness before I showed him to you;
I would have told you Margret was an impetuous, whole-souled
woman, glad to throw her life down for her father, without one
bitter thought of the wife and mother she might have been; I
would have painted her mother tender, (as she was,) forgetting
how pettish she grew on busy days: but what can I do? I must
show you men and women as they are in that especial State of the
Union where I live. In all the others, of course, it is very
different. Now, being prepared for disappointment, will you see
my hero?

He had sauntered out from the city for a morning walk,--not
through the hills, as Margret went, going home, but on the other
side, to the river, over which you could see the Prairie. We are
in Indiana, remember. The sunlight was pure that morning,
powerful, tintless, the true wine of life for body or spirit.
Stephen Holmes knew that, being a man of delicate animal
instincts, and so used it, just as he had used the dumb-bells in