man smiled sadly and shook his head. "You do not understand our society. I cannot even see her except at a distance, unless they choose to permit it. I cannot write love letters to her, can I? In our world one cannot do such things, and it would be of no use if I could-"

"I would," said Taquisara. "I would write. I would see her-I Would empty hell and drag Satan out by the hair to help me, if the saints would not. But you! You sit still and die of love. And when you are dead, what will you have? A fine tomb out in the country, and lights, and crowns, and some masses-but you will not get the woman you love. It is not love that consumes you. It is imagination. You imagine that you are going to die, and unless you recover from this, you probably will. With your temperament, the best thing you can do is to come with me to Sicily and forget all about Donna Veronica Serra. No woman would ever look at a man who loves as you do. She might pity you enough to marry you, if no one else presented himself just then; but when she was tired of pitying you she would love some one else. It is not life to be always pitying. That is the business of saints and nuns-not of men and women."

Gianluca was hurt by his friend's

tone.

"You admit that you never were in love," he said; "how can you understand me?"

"That is just it! I do not understand you. But if I were you, I would take matters into my own hands. I will wager anything you please that Donna Veronica has never so much as heard that you wish to marry her-" "But they have told her, of course!" interrupted Gianluca. "They have asked her—”

"Who told you so?" inquired Taquisara, incredulously. "And if any one has told you, why should you believe it? There are several millions on the one side, which Macomer wishes to possess, and there can be nothing on the other but the word of one of the

interested persons. You have met her in the world and exchanged a few words-that has been all-"

"I have spoken with her five times," said Gianluca, thoughtfully.

"Have you counted?" Taquisara smiled. "Very good-five times—seventeen, if you like you, sitting on the edge of your chair and opening your eyes wide to see her profile while she was looking at her aunt-you, saying that it was a fine day, or Tamagno was a great singer, and she, saying 'yes' to everything. And you love her. Well, no doubt, I could love a woman with whom I might never have spoken at all-surely-and why not? But you take it for granted that she knows you love her and expects you to ask for her, and has been told that you have done so and has herself dictated the refusal. You are credulous and despondent, and you are not strong. Besides, you sit here all day long, brooding and doing nothing but expecting to die, and hoping that she will shed a tear when she hears of your untimely end. Is that what you call making love in Naples?"

"I have told you that I can do nothing."

"It does not follow that there is nothing to be done."

"What is there, for instance?" "Go to the Palozza Macomer and find out the truth yourself. Write to hertake your place before the door and stand there day and night until she sees you and notices you." Taquisara laughed. "Do anything-but do not sit here waiting to die in cotton wool with your feet to the fire and your head in the clouds."

"All that is absurd!" answered Gianluca, petulantly.

"Is it absurd? Then I will begin by doing it for you, and see what happens."

"You?" The younger man turned in surprise.

"I. Yes. All the more, as I have nothing to lose. I will go and find Bosio Macomer and talk with him-"

"You will insult him," said Gianluca, anxiously. "There will be a quarrel

assisted by the grace of God, as certain like Pascal and Baxter evidently were, they will be less than true; he is subnormal, and his views are apt to be sub-normal, too-deficient in balance, sobriety, charity. When a minister is untouched in wind, sturdy in limb, clean in blood, you have a certain guarantee of bright, honest, manly thinking. He is not likely to be falsetto, hysterical, garrulous, simply because he is sound in body as well as in mind

(It is, however, possible to be exasperatingly healthy, and one can understand a much tried woman being driven away from a minister whose radiant, unlined face showed that he had never known pain, and who had married a rich wife, and taking refuge in a church whose minister had a liver and preached rampant Calvinism. "Was yon a man," so she put it-for a widow and seven children to under?" Invalid ministers have a certain use and do gather sympathetic congregations-becoming a kind of infirmary chaplains. But their ecclesiastical and theological views must be taken with great caution.)

sit

It is not extravagance to say that the physical health of theologians has affected the religious character of nations. No one can estimate how much Germany has gained from Luther's genial and robust nature, or Scotland lost through Calvin being a chronic invalid and Knox being a broken man. During long centuries it was the custom of Christendom for a baron to send his able-bodied sons to the field and any deformed or sickly lad to the Church. Was it wonderful that the theology and religion got out of touch with life, and became fantastic and unreasonable? Human life has now more doors for the infirm, and the Christian Church has ceased to be a home for incurables, but it is not as a rule the strong, stirring, full-blooded boys of a family who enter the ministry, but the lad who is half-alive, who plays no games, who is painfully composed. This is a public misfortune, since, if any other man be out of sorts, his wife suffers, but if a minister be

below par a thousand people have a less successful life for a week. His business is to put heart in them for six days' work and trial, but for that enterprise a man's pulse must beat high and his own heart be buoyant. If his digestion be bad, then he goes into the pulpit and hits viciously at some heresy or mourns the decay of morals. The people, who have been expecting a glimpse of heaven, go home in despair. The saints lament the degeneracy of the times, and the young people resolve that they will have nothing to do with religion. But the times are really the best we have ever seen, and religion is the strength of the human soul. The trouble is in this case neither in the Bible nor the world, but in the pulpit, which that day was filled by a hypochondriac or a melancholiac. Every church should have a physical examination at the entrance to the theological college and only admit those men who would have passed as first-class lives with an insurance company. And the working minister should have his own rules of healthto have his study re-charged with oxygen every hour, to sleep with his bedroom window open, to walk four miles a day, to play an out-door game once a week, to have six weeks' holiday a year and once in seven years three months-all that his thought and teaching may be oxygenated and the fresh air of Christianity fill the souls of his people.

From "The Cure of Souls." By John Watson, D.D. (Ian Maclaren.) Dodd, Mead & Co., Publishers.

ALONG SHORE.

"Come right in an' set down. Come in an' rest ye," Elijah exclaimed, and led the way into his comfortable kitchen. The sunshine poured in at the two further windows, and a cat was curled up sound asleep on the table that stood between them. There was a new-looking oilcloth of a tiled pattern on the floor, and a crockery teapot, large for a household of only

one person, stood on the bright stove. I ventured to say that somebody must be a very good housekeeper.

"That's me," acknowledged the old fisherman with frankness. "There ain't nobody here but me. I try to keep things looking right, same's poor dear left 'em. You set down here in this chair, then you can look off an' see the water. None on 'em thought I was goin' to get along alone, no way, but I wa'n't goin' to have my house turned upsi' down an' all changed about; no, not to please nobody. 1 was the only one knew just how she liked to have things set, poor dear, an' I said I was goin' to make shift, an' I have made shift. I'd rather tough it out alone." And he sighed heavily, as if to sigh were his familiar consolation.

We were both silent for a minute; the old man looked out of the window, as if he had forgotten I was there.

"You must miss her very much?" I said at last.

"I do miss her," he answered and sighed again. "Folks all kep' repeatin' that time would ease me, but I can't find it does. No, I miss her just the same every day."

step in to ary one. Yes, ma'am, I keep a-lookin' off and droppin' o' my stitches; that's just how it seems. I can't get over losin' of her no way nor no how. Yes, ma'am, that's just how it seems to me."

I did not say anything, and he did not look up.

"I git feelin' so sometimes I have to lay everything by an' go out door. She was a sweet pretty creetur' long's she lived," the old man added mournfully. "There's that little rockingchair o' her'n, I set an' notice it an' think how strange 'tis a creatur' like her should be gone an' that chair be here right in its old place."

"I wish I had known her; Mrs. Todd told me all about your wife one day," I said.

"You'd have liked to come and see her; all the folks did," said poor Elijah. "She'd been so pleased to hear everything and see somebody new that took such an int'rest. She had a kind o' gift to make it pleasant for folks. I guess likely Almiry Todd told you she was a pretty woman, especially in her young days; late years, too, she kep' her looks and come to be so pleasant lookin'." There, 'taint SO much

"Eight year now, come the first of October. It don't seem near so long. I've got a sister that comes and stops long o' me a little spell, spring an' fall, an' odd times if I send after her. I ain't near so good a hand to sew as I be to knit, and she's very quick to set everything to rights. She's a married woman with a family; her son's folks lives at home, an' I can't make no great claim on her time. But it makes me a kind o' good excuse, when I do send, to help her a little; she ain't none too well off. Poor dear always liked her, and we used to contrive our ways together. 'Tis full as easy to be alone. I set here an' think it all over, an' think considerable when the weather's bad to go outside. I get so some days it feels as if poor dear might step right back into this kitchen. I keep a-watchin' them doors as if she might

The old widower sat with his head bowed over his knitting, as if he were hastily shortening the very thread of time. The minutes went slowly by. He stopped his work and clasped his hands firmly together. I saw he had forgotten his guest, and I kept the afternoon watch with him. At last he looked up as if but a moment had passed of his continual loneliness.

"Yes, ma'am, I'm one that has seen trouble," he said, and began to knit again.

The visible tribute of his careful housekeeping, and the clean, bright room which had once enshrined his wife, and now enshrined her memory, was very moving to me; he had no thought for any one else or for any other place. I began to see her myself in her home, a delicate-looking, faded lit

tle woman, who leaned upon his rough strength and affectionate heart, who was always watching for his boat out of this very window, and who always opened the door and welcomed him when he came home.

"I used to laugh at her, poor dear," said Elijah, as he read my thought. "I used to make light of her timid notions. She used to be fearful when I was out in bad weather or baffled about gittin' ashore. She used to say the time seemed long to her, but I've found out all about it now. I used to be dreadful thoughtless when I was a young man and the fish was bitin' well. I'd stay out late some o' them days, an' I expect she'd watch an' watch an' lose heart a-waitin'. My heart alive! what a supper she'd git, an' be right there watchin' from the door, with somethin' over her head if 't was cold, waitin' to hear all about it as I come up the field. Lord, how I think o' all them little things!"

"This was what she called the best room; in this way," he said presently, laying his knitting on the table, and leading the way across the front entry and unlocking a door, which he threw open with an air of pride. The best room seemed to me a much sadder and more empty place than the kitchen; its conventionalities lacked the simple perfection of the humbler room and failed on the side of poor ambition; it was only when one remembered what patient saving, and what high respect for society in the abstract go to such furnishing that the little parlor was interesting at all. I could imagine the great day of certain purchases, the bewildering shops of the next large town, the aspiring anxious woman, the clumsy sea-tanned man in his best clothes, so eager to be pleased, but at ease only when they were safe back in the sail-boat again, going down the bay with their precious freight, the hoarded money all spent and nothing to think of but tiller and sail. I looked at the unworn carpet, the glass vases on the mantel-piece with their prim bunches of bleached swamp grass and dusty marsh rosemary, and I could

read the history of Mrs. Tilley's best room from its very beginning.

"You see for yourself what beautiful rugs she could make; now I'm going to show you her best tea-things she thought so much of," said the master of the house, opening the door of a shallow cupboard. "That's real chiny, all of it on those two shelves," he told me proudly. "I bought it all myself, when we was first married, in the port of Bordeaux. There never was one single piece of it broken until- Well, I used to say, long as she lived, there never was a piece broke, but long at the last I noticed she'd look kind o' distressed, an' I thought 't was 'count o' me boastin.' When they asked if they should use it when the folks was here to supper, time o' her funeral, I knowed she'd want to have everything nice, and I said 'certain.' Some o' the women they come runnin' to me an' called me, while they was takin' of the chiny down, an' showed me there was one o' the cups broke an' the pieces wrapped in paper and pushed way back here, corner o' the shelf. They didn't want me to go an' think they done it. Poor dear! I had to put right out o' the house when I see that. I knowed in one minute how 't was. We'd got so used to sayin' 't was all there just's I fetched it home, an' so when she broke that cup somehow or 'nother she couldn't frame no words to come an' tell me. She couldn't think 'twould vex me, 'twas her own hurt pride. I guess there wa'n't no other secret ever lay between us.”

The French cups with their gay sprigs of pink and blue, the best tumblers, an old flowered bowl and tea caddy, and a japanned waiter or two adorned the shelves. These, with a few daguerreotypes in a little square pile, had the closet to themselves, and I was conscious of much pleasure in seeing them. One is shown over many a house in these days where the interest may be more complex, but not more definite.

"Those were her best things, poor dear," said Elijah as he locked the door again. "She told me that last