Look not on pleasures as they come, but go.
Defer not the least vertue: life's poore span
Make not an ell, by trifling in thy woe.
If thou do ill, the joy fades, not the pains.
If well, the pain doth fade, the joy remains.

GEORGE HERBERT.

[Illustration]

Young Mrs. Johnson, who was a mother of many, hardly knew which to pity
more; Miss Jessamine for having her little ways and her antimacassars
rumpled by a young Jackanapes; or the boy himself, for being brought up
by an old maid.

Oddly enough, she would probably have pitied neither, had Jackanapes
been a girl. (One is so apt to think that what works smoothest works to
the highest ends, having no patience for the results of friction.) That
Father in GOD, who bade the young men to be pure, and the maidens brave,
greatly disturbed a member of his congregation, who thought that the
great preacher had made a slip of the tongue.

"That the girls should have purity, and the boys courage, is what you
would say, good Father?"

"Nature has done that," was the reply; "I meant what I said."

In good sooth, a young maid is all the better for learning some robuster
virtues than maidenliness and not to move the antimacassars. And the
robuster virtues require some fresh air and freedom. As, on the other