PRUE AND I.

BY

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS.

"Knitters in the sun."
_Twelfth Night._



A WORD TO THE GENTLE READER.

An old book-keeper, who wears a white cravat and black trowsers in the
morning, who rarely goes to the opera, and never dines out, is clearly
a person of no fashion and of no superior sources of information. His
only journey is from his house to his office; his only satisfaction is
in doing his duty; his only happiness is in his Prue and his children.

What romance can such a life have? What stories can such a man tell?

Yet I think, sometimes, when I look up from the parquet at the opera,
and see Aurelia smiling in the boxes, and holding her court of love,
and youth, and beauty, that the historians have not told of a fairer
queen, nor the travellers seen devouter homage. And when I rememember
that it was in misty England that quaint old George Herbert Sang of
the--

"Sweet day so cool, so calm, so bright--
The bridal of the earth and sky,"