while, (but rarely, thank God!) the stroke comes crashing in, through ribs and all, and then the sufferer dies, I suppose. I never knew of a case.

Our hero's was no such one, at any rate. Although he carefully forbore all particular attentions, he hoped against hope, for a time, first, that he might be mistaken; then that Miss Sara might change her mind, though he knew that would be a miracle. Then sweet, self-consolatory vanity offered reasons for his failure. Perhaps she was already in love with some other man. Perhaps her health was not as good as it seemed. Perhaps some one had slandered him to her. It was not till days and weeks had passed, that he came to the wise conclusion, that he was unsuccessful simply because he was not nearly so fine a fellow as he had always thought himself, and quite as far from being irresistible as the rest of us.

--

Youth, health, courage, occupation, and elastic spirits versus wounded pride and disappointed love the result could not long be doubtful. The struggle was terrible while it lasted, for the same manly qualities that strengthened one side, strengthened also its opposite. My friend ate, slept, and talked little, and smoked much; and so looked a little pale and thin. But it was a mere question of time. Time is the panacea, which, I verily believe, will cure all earthly ills, provided you only take enough of it. Try it. If the first dose does not cure, take another and a larger one.

The Doctor confessed to me afterward, that he had another prescription which benefited him immensely. He was called to attend a poor fellow with cancer on the face. A hopeless case-poverty-advancing age- unavailing desire for strong drink, and an agonizing disease! My friend assured me that shame at his own repinings, when he had not one of these horrors to complain of, was his first step toward reinstatement in good sense and good humor. He took his dose twice a day, and oftener if he found it necessary, and the poor wretch he was serving, while thus disciplining himself, must have wondered at the faithful, kindly, marvellous attentiveness with which his new doctor smoothed the last stages of his journey to the grave.

I have already intimated that I despair of making Brown's distress touching to the general reader as it was to me. Yet I would defy any one to see, unmoved, the way the poor fellow took his disappointment to heart. Keenly, keenly, was he cut by every word and look, whereby the innocent destroyer of his peace showed her joy at the change he constrained himself to make in his manner from lover-like to friend-like-more keenly than he would have been by the openest disdain she could have expressed. My private opinion is, that she must have been somewhat to blame, thus to mislead his usually sagacious mind. But if I had thought best to utter this suspicion to Brown, I should probably have been sorry for it. In fact, the most discouraging symptom in his process of recovery was, the grave respect and admiration with which he always spoke of Miss Evans.

We were sitting at breakfast, a few days or weeks after the Doctor really concluded that he was unmistakably a slighted man; a portentous gloom beclouded his face- even his drooping moustache seemed to partake of it - his hand was laid mechanically on the head of poor Jack, whose soft, brown eyes looked volumes of expostulatory deprecation of his master's low spirits.

The Doctor looked up, our eyes met, and I burst into an incontrollable laugh, wherein he deigned, albeit somewhat ruefully, to join.

'Old fellow,' said he

'Old fellow,' said I

'Will you oblige me by inquiring the price of board at the asylum for idiots?'

With all the pleasure in life- - on one condition.'

'Name it?'

'That you will give me a prescription for a friend of mine, who is troubled with 'Fractura Cordis.'

'Certainly,' said he, and forthwith wrote in his memorandum-book, tore out the leaf and handed it to me.

'Pure spirit of humbug!' he interrupted. 'You are a pretty chemist; do you think you could put up a prescription? That means 'Spalding's Prepared Glue, one bottle three times a day.'

'Oh! I see! by way of mending the fracture.

Yes, I have often thought a stick would do good in many cases of heart-break. But it's refreshing to me to see a smile on your face.'

'If I could only keep it there without so much exertion. Why can't I?'

In the evening, I got him to sit down to the piano, and though he began with such things as the plaintive 'Songs without Words' of Mendelssohn, yet he was gradually led on through his repertoire of grand piano music-works, whose authors rank as benefactors of their race- - Chopin, Liszt, Dreyschook, Blumenthal, Gottschalk.

The succeeding symptoms of Brown's slow recovery can be easily imagined. He soon took to being very industrious and very cross, for which latter manifestation Jack liked him none the less; but I, being neither a dog nor a woman, liked him not at all. So let us leave him in his savageness, and talk between ourselves.

'Why did not Miss Evans fall in love with the Doctor?'

My dear sir, (or madam,) heaven knows, and possibly, not probably, the lady herself. He is good-looking enough, I suppose. His face has the goodhumored expression which springs from continued and unthought-of health, and his general appearance the grace that belongs with a consciousness of great bodily power and activity. He had always, before he met Miss Evans, been accustomed to the raising of unfounded hopes in the hearts of the other sex, rather than to suffering from them in his own.

'Perhaps it was a matter of poverty or riches that disinclined her.' No, indeed, for he had neither. He was richer than she, for he had some money, and was steadily making more-much. faster than she could do by making music-lessons, which she was dutifully doing to support her mother and herself. Possibly his chance might have been better if he had been richer, for Miss Evans's expressed belief was, that if two people loved each other enough to marry, it made little difference as to which party had the purse. The Doctor, on the other hand, vowed he would never marry a girl richer than himself, which probably meant, in his case as well as others, unless he fell in love with her.

'Why, in the world, then, should the Doctor fail, when the chances were so much on his side?'

I assure you, I am as much surprised as you can be, and so was all Chicago. What the world said was, that Miss Evans quite over-estimated her pretty face, (but this I can't allow ;) that Doctor Brown, with his means, talents, manners, and connections, was as good a match as there was in the city; that Sara would 'go through the woods and pick up a crooked stick at last;' that the Doctor might thank his stars he was well out of it, for whosoever married Sara, married her mother too, etc., etc.

'Could it be that she had a horror of his profession?'

Scarcely; for women are apt to like doctors, whether of medicine or divinity; perhaps, because there is something mysterious and occult in their power. Women like to look forward to a comfortable confidence in those powers, (medical,) in the bodily ills which are only too surely part of their future lot, and to lean on those, (spiritual,) in the religious yearnings that form the angelic part of the true womanly nature.

'Then what do you think was the reason?'

Well, if you put it to me in that personal way, I must say that I think it was, because he fell in love with her first; and more, he let her see that it was so; and, worst of all, he let other people see it, too. He had that kind of insolent humility which says, 'I have nothing to conceal,' which really means: 'Whatever I do is good enough for all the world to know.' And although he knew that a little judicious neglect was what his cause needed, yet, as it was day where she was, and night where she was not, to him, he took no pains to curb his impatient yearning for the sweet intoxication of her society. This self-indulgence put on, for his eyes, the attractive garb of truth and candor. All very fine, Doctor, except that it failed of its object. How could any lady be expected to suppose that a hand so lightly at her disposal, had any weight in the world? It is a hand of iron under a glove of velvet that makes so good a surgeon, and so influential a business-man as the Doctor; but how could she suspect it, in whom, of all others, it was necessary to inspire respect, while the owner seemed to have nothing better to do than try to please her?

However this may be, such a season of distress, be the cause explicable or not, seems to form a barrier between boyhood and manhood. One is a boy till it comes, no matter how long it may be deferred, and when it is past, one is a boy no longer. Fate can never hurt him so badly again. It has no sharper

arrows in store, and the scar which that barb left, covers and protects the tenderest and most exposed nerve-point in his frame.

ness.

So much chat by way of by-play, while the Doctor is getting over his crossHe gradually grew to be very much like his old self; but still the wound bled afresh whenever he met his darling, and watched with feverish regret and admiration her beauty, grace, and goodness, and her pitying, sisterly affection and solicitude to him-ward. Therefore was I moved to drag him away from town, to stay for a few days, or rather nights, at the Park View Hotel; a nice place on the lake-shore, near Chicago, where people can go and stay for the summer months, doing business in town as usual.

I say people can go there. They can, but they do not, or at least only a few do. There stands a beautiful hotel, excellently furnished and well kept, and almost empty! This is for the simple reason that Chicago, with its lakebreezes, its Michigan avenue drive and promenade on the lake-shore, its pleasant and respectable, though rather sober and (perhaps) puritanical society, elegantly housed, and, in short, its various and sundry appliances for comfort and luxury, (including a large Teutonic infusion into its population, bringing with it a great store of music, of course,) is as pleasant a summer residence as heart need wish. While I have lived there, I have found no temptation in my own mind, or the minds of my friends, to get away; except, always, that for each of us children of the dear old Atlantic States, there exists a Mecca, away off under the rising sun, toward which our hearts ever turn when praying, and our feet when free.

Never fear, ye sea-girt shores, ye beloved Mohawk, and Hudson, and Delaware, and Susquehanna valleys, or honored old New-England, mother of all good things never fear that ye are forgotten by your westward-wandering children! Their home-sent thoughts and memories fall as thick and fast and silently on your unconscious hill-sides and roof-trees, as the softest autumn snow-storm. And the flakes lie there as quietly, ready to melt in sympathy with every beam of sunshine you enjoy, or to harden into a strong and present protection whenever the frosts of adversity shall threaten you.

It was a real pleasure to hear the Doctor touch the piano again, throwing his whole soul into the intricacies of those delicious masterpieces, as if he found fit expression for his feelings through them. He knew the uses of music, and he never played for show; but there was the true power in his playing; that which, for the time, brings the listener up to the level of the performer, in feeling, at least. And he enjoyed it, in spite of all sorrows. The lake, too, seemed to have a cheering influence on him. He gazed on it with dreamy eyes, as he paced its bank, smoking his segar, and sometimes amused Jack, by skipping stones along its surface for that childish quadruped to chase. And then the bathing; he said it cooled his head to dive; perhaps he hoped it might cool his heart, too. At any rate, dive he did, with a pertinacity I never saw equalled. Especially he loved diving from the side of an old stranded and half-sunken schooner, which lay in a nook not much frequented by the other bathers, whose frolics and noise were perhaps a little too much for a man determined to be gloomy. Wrecks are not voiceless, on our lake; they tell sad tales; and the Doctor had had his share in the sad scenes they bring us, and done his part in

the painful duties they demand; for, though temporarily rather grim, he had the kindest heart in the world, and that warm and active sympathy of nature which wins love, irresistibly, from every soul, except, perhaps, the one person whom perversely such a nature chooses to single out for adoration. Lavished love is never prized at its worth; that which comes when we least expect it, is exquisitely precious. Not most valuable, indeed, but most flattering, and, therefore, oftenest successful.

Down at Park View, there were some agreeable people, though their name was not legion, that not being a common surname, as yet, out West. Among the guests, Miss Evans and her mamma made their appearance at the hotel, one afternoon; and when I saw the young lady's unaffected surprise at meeting the Doctor, and her entire absence of surprise at meeting my sister, it suggested itself to me that the last-named lady might possibly have had a hand in bringing Miss Evans down, although she would not own it to me, looking upon me as too confidential with Doctor Brown to be intrusted with so delicate a secret

The pretty Sara was paler than she used to be. And thinner too. The rounded outlines of her perfect chin and throat were not so full as of old, and her straight eyebrows and smooth forehead seemed tightened, as if by backward pressure at the temples. Had she been thinking of any thing particular? Do young ladies ever, on reflection, think they may have been mistaken in their own feelings at some past day? Perhaps not. I dare say the fact is, that the dear good girl had worked hard, and only made a bare living for herself and her mother. Poor thing! Dinging crotchets and quavers into little heads already full of crotchets of their own, and ready to break into unmusical very quavers of their own at having these original crotchets interfered with — this is hard work, and I fancy Miss Evans was beginning to see that her glorious independence was a pretty severe lot.

It is a good thing for her admirers, when any young girl begins to feel the need of something to lean on; something unlike herself, the complement, as it were, of her nature; having boldness contrasted to her modesty, ambition to her humility, logic to her conscience, justice to her benevolence, skepticism to her credulity; in short, stubbornness to her pliability, and strength to her weakness, all through. Fortunate it is for us all that such feelings of need do come over girls, for if they did not, alas for our matrimonial chances! We are none of us, of the sterner sex, modest enough, or humble or conscientious or benevolent or pliable enough to be acceptable, according to the standard the dear beings set for themselves - and each other.

To some such state of mind had our beauty, our heroine, just arrived. If her surviving parent had been father instead of mother, I think it probable that she would have clung to him with perfect contentment and fulness of joy. But then this history would never have been written, for she would have asked no hero but her father, and if he had lived only a few years, why she would have been an old maid, and that's all!

the Doctor

'But as he did not live- of course Exactly, madam. The Doctor might have now pressed his suit with good prospects of success, if he had not, months before, made his throw, and lost.