always a large assortment of the article to select from. Here, if I
mistake not, comes a pretty fair sample."

Even as he spoke the door was gently and slowly thrust ajar,
affording a glimpse of the slender figure of a young girl, who, as
she timidly entered, seemed to bring the light and cheerfulness of
the outer atmosphere into the somewhat gloomy apartment. We know
not her errand there, nor can we reveal whether the young man gave
up his heart into her custody. If so, the arrangement was neither
better nor worse than in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, where
the parallel sensibilities of a similar age, importunate affections,
and the easy satisfaction of characters not deeply conscious of
themselves, supply the place of any profounder sympathy.

Not always, however, was the agency of the passions and affections
an office of so little trouble. It happened, rarely, indeed, in
proportion to the cases that came under an ordinary rule, but still
it did happen, that a heart was occasionally brought hither of such
exquisite material, so delicately attempered, and so curiously
wrought, that no other heart could be found to match it. It might
almost be considered a misfortune, in a worldly point of view, to be
the possessor of such a diamond of the purest water; since in any
reasonable probability it could only be exchanged for an ordinary
pebble, or a bit of cunningly manufactured glass, or, at least, for
a jewel of native richness, but ill-set, or with some fatal flaw, or
an earthy vein running through its central lustre. To choose
another figure, it is sad that hearts which have their wellspring in
the infinite, and contain inexhaustible sympathies, should ever be
doomed to pour themselves into shallow vessels, and thus lavish
their rich affections on the ground. Strange that the finer and