were given to finding the place in the various books.

"Oh, I see the line," said an old lady, at last. "It's one--two--three--
five lines from the bottom of the page:"

"'And that's what all the blessed evil's for.'"

"You don't think," queried the first speaker, appealing personally to
the president, "that Mr. Browning can really have meant that evil is
blessed, do you?"

The president regarded her with an affectionate and fatherly smile.

"I think," he said, with an air of settling everything, "that the
explanation of his meaning is to be found in the line which follows,--

"'It's use in Time is to environ us.'"

"Heavens!" whispered Fenton to Mrs. Staggchase; "fancy that incarnate
respectability environed by 'blessed evil!'"

"For my part," she returned, in the same tone, "I feel as if I were
visiting a lunatic asylum." "Yes, that line does make it beautifully
clear," observed the voice of Miss Catherine Penwick; "and I think
that's so beautiful about the exposed brain, and lidless eyes, and
disemprisoned heart. The image is so exquisite when he speaks of their
withering up at once."

Fenton made a droll grimace for the benefit of his neighbor, and then
observed with great apparent seriousness,--