who know how to use them, oftentimes as awful examples of the extreme of disorganization the whole moral system may undergo when a barbarous belief has strangled the natural human instincts. The physician, in the mean time, acquired for the collection some of those medical works where one may find recorded various rare and almost incredible cases, which may not have their like for a whole century, and then repeat themselves, so as to give a new lease of credibility to a story which had come to be looked upon as a fable.

Both the clergyman and the physician took a very natural interest in the young man who had come to reside in their neighborhood for the present, perhaps for a long period. The rector would have been glad to see him at church. He would have liked more especially to have had him hear his sermon on the Duties of Young Men to Society. The doctor, meanwhile, was meditating on the duties of society to young men, and wishing that he could gain the young man's confidence, so as to help him out of any false habit of mind or any delusion to which he might be subject, if he had the power of being useful to him.

as

Dr. Butts was the leading medical practitioner, not only of Arrowhead. Village, but of all the surrounding region. He was an excellent specimen of the country doctor, self-reliant, selfsacrificing, working a great deal harder for his living than most of those who call themselves the laboring classes, if none but those whose hands were hardened by the use of farming or mechanical implements had any work to do. He had that sagacity without which learning is a mere incumbrance, and he had also a fair share of that learning without which sagacity is like a traveller with a good horse, but who cannot read the directions on the guide-boards. He was not a man to be taken in by names. He well knew that oftentimes very in

nocent-sounding words mean very grave disorders; that all degrees of disease and disorder are frequently confounded under the same term; that " run down" may stand for a fatigue of mind or body from which a week or a month of rest will completely restore the overworked patient, or an advanced stage of a mortal illness; that "seedy" may signify the morning's state of feeling, after an evening's over-indulgence, which calls for a glass of soda-water and a cup of coffee, or a dangerous malady which will pack off the subject of it, at the shortest notice, to the south of France. He knew too well that what is spoken lightly of as a nervous disturbance may imply that the whole machinery of life is in a deranged condition, and that every individual organ would groan aloud if it had any other language than the terrible inarticulate one of pain by which to communicate with the consciousness.

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When, therefore, Dr. Butts heard the word antipatia he did not smile, and say to himself that this was an idle whim, a foolish fancy, which the young man had got into his head. Neither was he satisfied to set down everything to the account of insanity, plausible as that supposition might seem. He was prepared to believe in some exceptional, perhaps anomalous, form of exaggerated sensibility, relating to what class of objects he could not at present conjecture, but which was as vital to the subject of it as the insulating arrangement to a piece of electrical machinery. With this feeling he began to look into the history of antipathies as recorded in all the books and journals on which he could lay his hands.

The holder of the Portfolio closes it for the present month. He wishes to say a few words to his readers, before offering them some verses which have

no connection with the narrative now in progress.

If one could have before him a set of photographs taken annually, representing the same person as he or she appeared for thirty or forty or fifty years, it would be interesting to watch the gradual changes of aspect from the age of twenty, or even of thirty or forty, to that of threescore and ten. The face might be an uninteresting one; still, as sharing the inevitable changes wrought by time, it would be worth looking at as it passed through the curve of life, the vital parabola, which betrays itself in the symbolic changes of the features. An inscription is the same thing, whether we read it on slate-stone, or granite, or marble. To watch the lights and shades, the reliefs and hollows, through a lifetime, or a large part of it, by the aid of a continuous series of photographs would not only be curious; it would teach us much more about the laws of physiognomy than we could get from casual and unconnected observations.

The same kind of interest, without any assumption of merit to be found in them, I would claim for a series of annual poems, beginning in middle life and continued to what many of my correspondents are pleased to remind me -as if I required to have the fact brought to my knowledge is no longer youth. Here is the latest of a series of annual poems read during the last thirty-four years. There seems to have been one interruption, but there may have been other poems not recorded or remembered. This, the latest of the sepoem ries, was listened to by the scanty remnant of what was a large and brilliant circle of classmates and friends when the first of the long series was read before them, then in the flush of ardent manhood:

John B. Tabb.

It may be remembered by those who have read my experiences in endeavoring to assist my fate that on the 14th of September of a certain year, a day on which I had come firmly to believe that she who was to be my wife should enter into my life, a girl baby had been born, whom I had accepted as my destined matrimonial partner. In my at tempt to give personal aid to what I had supposed to be my destiny, I had failed. Miss Kitty Watridge, the young lady whom I had hoped to receive as the gift of Fate, had been relegated to her lover, Harvey Glade; and the babe, of whom I have spoken, had come to me. The fact that on the day indicated in my diary this young creature not only came into my life, but into her own, greatly satisfied and encouraged me. I would begin at the beginning. Within the sphere of my immediate cognizance would grow and develop the infant, the child, the girl, the woman, and, finally, the wife. What influence might I not have upon this development? The parents were my friends; the child was my selected bride. The possibilities of advantageous guidance, unseen perhaps, 1 Atlantic Monthly, January, 1885.

but potent to a degree unattainable by a mere parent or guardian, were, to my thinking, boundless.

I was now more content than I had been in the case of the young lady whom I had supposed had been given me by Fate, but who, it now appeared very fortunately, had been snatched away before my irrevocable mistake had been made. I was very grateful for this: I was grateful to Fate; I was grateful to Mr. Glade, the successful lover; I was even grateful to Kitty for not having allowed herself to be influenced by anything she may have seen in me during our short acquaintance. Of the past of Kitty I knew little, as was well demonstrated by the appearance of Harvey Glade. My present fiancée had no past. With her and with me it was all future, which would gently crystallize, minute by minute and day by day, into a present which would be mutually our own.

Of course I said nothing of all this to any one. The knowledge of our destiny was locked up in the desk which held my diary and in my own heart. When the proper time came, she, first, should know. I am an honorable man, and as such felt fully qualified to be the custo

dian of what was, in fact, her secret as well as mine.

I took an early opportunity to become acquainted with the one who was to be the future partner of my life. It was towards the end of October, I think, that I paid a visit to Dr. Tom Wiltby and his wife Jane, my predestined parents-in-law. Had they known the position they occupied towards me, they would have been a very much surprised couple. The interest I exhibited in their first-born did, as I thought, surprise them a little, but it only increased the warmth of the welcome they gave me, and drew me closer to their hearts. The emotions which possessed me when, in the preceding summer, I had stood awaiting the moment when Kitty Watridge should enter the room and first present herself to my sight were nothing to those which quickened the action of my heart as a nurse brought into the Wiltby parlor a carefully disposed bundle of drapery, in the midst of which reposed my future wife.

I approached, and looked at her. Her face was displayed to view, but her form was undistinguishable. For an instant our eyes met; but, so far as I could judge, no spark of reciprocal sympathy seemed to shine from hers. In fact, they rolled about in an irrelevant manner which betokened a preoccupation so intense that even the advent of a husband could have no effect upon it. But whatever the child had on its mind- or stomach gave a volcanic mobility to its countenance, which caused me much to wonder. The eyes then closed, and appeared to be writhing and swelling beneath their lids; the mouth was alternately convoluted and unrolled towards nose, cheeks, and chin; while the rest of the face, which had been of an Indian reddish hue, now darkened, and from the puffy jaws to the top of the bald head seemed moved by a spasm, but whether of premonition or despair I could not tell.

I went away a little disappointed. The chaoticness of initiatory existence had never before been so forcibly impressed on my mind.

During the following winter and spring I built up an ideal, or rather a series of ideals. They were little children, they were girls, they were women. At about nineteen years of age the individual existence of each ended, and became merged into the oneness of my matrimonial life. Sometimes my ideal was a blonde, sometimes a brunette. From the cursory glance I had had of the one to whom all these fancies referred, I could not judge whether she would be dark or fair. She had no hair, and all that I could remember of her eyes was that they had no soul light. Her father was dark, her mother fair: she might be either.

Of all the legendary heroines of love, none ever so impressed me as that Francesca whose strong love not only braved every prejudice and barrier of earth, but, according to eye-witnesses of the fact, floated with her indefinitely through hell. In verse and picture, and upon the stage, I knew Francesca well, better, perhaps, than any other womau. But to such an one I would not be merely a Paolo, but the elder brother also. I would have no proxy, no secret love, no unfaithfulness. There should be all the impetuosity, all the spirit of self-immolation, without any necessity for it. She who was to be mine had become in my thoughts a Francesca, and she grew before my mind to ripened loveliness. Her eyes sparkled with rapture when, as through the gates of old Ravenna, the fair Ghibelline first saw the brave rider that she thought to wed, so this one would see through the gates of womanly consciousness, not a mere envoy, but both Malatesta brothers

me.

in one, lover and husband, With such an imaginary one I read legends of old loves; with such an one I sat in shaded bowers, her young face upturned to mine, and the red light from the wings touching with color the passionate picture. But no jester watched with sneering gibes, no husband fought afar on battle-field; Paolo and Lanciotto in one looked into the uplifted eyes.

It was in the early summer that my two sisters and myself were invited to the Wiltby mansion for a visit, which our kindly hosts hoped would be somewhat protracted. Among other things that were to be done the baby was to be baptized, and Grace Anna, for whom she was named, was to act as godmother. I was very glad to make this visit. Quite a long time had now elapsed since my first interview with Francesca, as I always intended to call her, notwithstanding the name that might be bestowed upon her by the church; and she must have now begun to foreshadow, in a measure, that which she was to be.

When I saw her I found that there was not quite so much foreshadowing as I had expected; but, in spite of that, she was a little creature whom, without doing violence to any æsthetic instinct, I could take to my heart. She was a pudgy infant, with blue eyes, a blankety head, and a mouth that was generally ready to break into a smile if you tickled the corners of it. Instead of the long and flowing draperies in which I first beheld her, she now wore short dresses, and that she possessed remarkably fat legs and blue woolen socks was a fact which Francesca never failed to endeavor to impress upon my observation. I excited a great deal of surprise, with some admiration on the part of the mother and occasional jocular remarks from Bertha, my younger sister, by showing, at the very beginning of our visit, a strong preference for the society of the baby. I asked to be allowed to take her into

my arms, and walk with her into the garden; and although this privilege was at first denied me, unless some lady should accompany me, I being considered quite inexperienced in the care of an infant, I at last gained my point, and frequently had the pleasure of a tête-à-tête stroll with Francesca. With my future bride in my arms, slowly walking in the shaded avenues of the garden, I gave my imagination full play. I enlarged her eyes, and gave them a steadiness of upturn which they did not now possess; the white fuzz upon her head grew into rich masses of goldbrown hair; the nose was lengthened and refined; her lips were less protruded, and made more continuously dry; while a good deal of fatty deposit was removed from the cheeks and the second chin. As I walked thus tenderly gazing down upon her, and often removing her little fist from her mouth, I pictured in her lineaments the budding womanhood for which I waited. I would talk softly to her, and although she seldom answered but in a gurgling monotone I saw in our intercourse the dawning of a unity to be.

After we had been a few days at the Wiltby house Miss Kitty Watridge came there, also on a visit. Her engagement to Mr. Glade had not produced much effect upon her personal appearance, although I thought her something quieter, and with a little sedateness which I had not observed in her before. Her advent at this time was not to my liking. As an object of my regard, she had, in becoming engaged to another, ceased to exist; she had passed out of my sphere of consideration, and the fact that she had once acted a prominent part within it made it appear to me that propriety demanded that she should not only go out of it, but stay out of it. Her influence upon my intercourse with Francesca was, from the first, objectionable. My sisters had always been accustomed to regard my wishes with a gratifying