expression of feeling. My cousin became perfectly gentle in his
manner, but there was a want of that pungent excess, which is the
finest flavor of character. His views were moderate and calm. He was
swept away by no boyish extravagance, and, even while I wished he
would sin only a very little, I still adored him as a saint. The truth
is, as I tell Prue, I am so very bad because I have to sin for
two--for myself and our cousin the curate. Often, when I returned
panting and restless from some frolic, which had wasted almost all the
night, I was rebuked as I entered the room in which he lay peacefully
sleeping. There was something holy in the profound repose of his
beauty, and, as I stood looking at him, how many a time the tears have
dropped from my hot eyes upon his face, while I vowed to make myself
worthy of such a companion, for I felt my heart owning its allegiance
to that strong and imperial nature.

My cousin was loved by the boys, but the girls worshipped him. His
mind, large in grasp, and subtle in perception, naturally commanded
his companions, while the lustre of his character allured those who
could not understand him. The asceticism occasionally showed itself a
vein of hardness, or rather of severity in his treatment of others. He
did what he thought it his duty to do, but he forgot that few could
see the right so clearly as he, and very few of those few could so
calmly obey the least command of conscience. I confess I was a little
afraid of him, for I think I never could be severe.

In the long winter evenings I often read to Prue the story of some old
father of the church, or some quaint poem of George Herbert's--and
every Christmas-eve, I read to her Milton's Hymn of the Nativity.
Yet, when the saint seems to us most saintly, or the poem most
pathetic or sublime, we find ourselves talking of our cousin the