sica was certain of this, she presented her sister not only with her wedding-outfit, but with twenty thousand pounds.

"At this rate," said she to herself, "I shall soon be poor enough to suit even George !"

After the excitement and tears of the wedding, Mrs. Hilton and Mrs. Thorndyke were glad to escape from London, where the void left by Lily's departure was painfully felt, to a delightful house in Surrey, to which they had been invited by an American lady living in England. Of course George Carroll was of the party. He was beginning to feel that this happiness could not last forever, and he actually had so little conceit, and was so robbed of his usual powers of penetration, that he did not know that Jessica loved him.

He made up his mind to fly from temptation, as he had once before done with only partial success.

She, on the other hand, was in a prolonged fever of anxiety and impatience, and resolved to find out at all hazards what his feelings were towards her.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN this frame of mind they met at their hostess's tea-table. When the social rite of tea-drinking and cake-eating was finished, George suggested a stroll in the garden. They stepped out on to the velvet lawn, and walked between beds of glowing midsummer flowers to a seat at some distance under a spreading beech-tree.

"I am tired," said Mrs. Thorndyke. "Let us rest here."

There was something almost petulant in her tone. George glanced at her quickly.

"Tired already?" he said. "You have been doing too much." "Yes," she assented, more gently. "I think I have."

"But you have enjoyed England, haven't you?" asked George, in a conversational company-tone which drove Jessica frantic.

Immensely," she said, dryly.

She sat down on the bench under the beech-tree, and leaned her hand against the smooth trunk behind her. George threw himself on the ground at her feet.

"One learns so much here simply by observation," he said, looking a long way off and picking absently at a little flower which grew near his hand.

"That is true of every country," said Mrs. Thorndyke, wearily.

"Yes, but we Americans think we know so much about the manners and customs of English people, until we come over. Now, I have seen a newly rich lady in New York afraid to introduce her guests to one another, because the best English people don't introduce now.' Whereas at some houses here I have been presented to a dozen persons. Then this same New York dame was painfully oppressed because at a ball I would shake hands with her. She tried to put me off with a courtesy, because, I suppose, she pictured the aristocracy all courtesying to each other. Now, nearly every person I have met has shaken hands with me."

"Our 'Anglomaniacs' are amusing. They have no idea that a man may hunt in anything but a red coat, or be married in a cut-away." After this, the forced dialogue on international traits ceased.

Of all hours the hour before sunset is perhaps the most charming of an English summer day. This afternoon the sky was tenderly blue and cloud-dappled. The low sun struck the landscape with almost level beams, warming every object into new beauty. The house, a few hundred yards away, but partially hidden from the pair who sat under the beech-tree, lay in a sort of sloping valley between two gentle, undulating hills. The rich green of turf and foliage was yet unspoiled by summer drought, and the exquisite roses were in full bloom, half covering the house, trailing over archways, and making the standard rose-trees look like huge long-stemmed bouquets. The whole scene was very lovely and peaceful, but its influence failed to quiet Jessica. Her head was on fire, her hands were icy. She felt that so much depended on this interview.

George Carroll was thinking the same thing, but his pride was holding him back from ever (as he thought) asking this beautiful creature to be his wife.

"By the way," he said, suddenly, as though following up a train of ideas," you said that you would tell me some day what had become of your money. Is this the day ?"

Jessica colored.

"I don't know," she said, more confused than George had ever seen her. "I do not think I ought to tell. It would seem like boasting." "Do you think I am likely to misunderstand you, after all this time?" asked Carroll.

"After our long and intimate acquaintance?" said Jessica, with a little forced laugh. Then, with sudden desperate boldness, "It is gone, that money. I gave it away."

Carroll jumped off the grass and stood up before her.

"Gave it away!" he cried. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said Mrs. Thorndyke, blushing and trembling, but firm as a rock, now that the first plunge was over, "I mean that I was far too rich for one young woman who had never been used to much money, and I really had no right to it. So I gave away at least half.”

There was absolute silence for a minute. Then George sat down at the extreme end of the bench (for he had no lounging familiar little ways, this proper young man).

"Now tell me," said he, gently, with his clear eyes fixed upon her face, "tell me exactly what you did with it."

It was a curious thing that this high-spirited young lady generally did what this dictatorial George bade her.

"Some I gave to Paul Lorrimer, but most to Mrs. Westalow and Mrs. Langford, and some of course, a little to dear Lily." She spoke as if she were repeating a lesson.

"You know," she added, apologetically, "I had no right to all that money, and I found that it-stood in the way of things."

She stopped and looked frightened. George's heart leaped in his breast.

"What things?" he asked, very softly, his eyes holding hers, and looking, oh, so full of a new, sweet life!

"Oh, lots of things," said Jessica, pulling absently at the button of her glove, and trying not to see George, though she couldn't help doing so, as he had unconsciously come a good deal nearer.

"Oh, you glorious darling!" he said, still softly, but with a tone which sunk into her heart. "My glorious darling !"

She said nothing, but she was panting from fear,—from joy,heaven knows what emotion.

"Jessica," he said, "will you give me this hand-without the glove?"

She tore off the dead-black kid, and laid her hand, warm, white, living, in George's own.

"Do you know what this means?" he asked, solemnly. "Do you know that this pledges you to be my own?-my very own, Jessica? Think well what you are doing."

This was too much.

"Oh, George," she cried, "do you love me? Oh, George, George!" and in one moment her arms were folded about his neck, and two hearts, each as virgin as the other, beat together.

"What have I done?" cried Carroll, aghast, when the tingling rapture of the first long kiss was over. "I have asked a princess to marry me."

"No, you haven't," said Jessica, her great gray eyes shining through her tears. "You haven't asked anybody to marry you!" And here the

tears were made into rainbows by the brilliance of her smile.

"Then I do now! This minute! Jessica, why did you give away all that money?"

She turned upon him a face of unutterable affection, and said, with unblushing effrontery,

"Because, sir, I knew that you would not love me with all that money, because you were a proud, mistaken creature."

"Oh, Jessica! To think of my blindnesss, and my audacity! How can a poor hack of a journalist like me make you happy?" "By trying to," said Jessica, almost saucily.

"Jessica," he said, solemnly, "I never loved any other woman."

George," said she, with delicious archness, but with the tears hanging on her lashes, "you are the only man who could make me believe that."

And he, because his unstained youth had been ignorant of lovemaking, feared to touch his beautiful beloved, and sat looking at her with adoring eyes.

"What does it matter?" he said, presently, "whether it is much or little money? Such base things shall not come between us. I have found, under all the glitter, and beauty, and riches, all that I wanted,— a woman's heart."

"Dear, dear George !" she said. "Don't tell anybody that I offered myself!"

THE END.

OF

A LITTLE TREATISE ON PLAGIARISMS.

yore, when a tribe and a language started on life together, there must have been a great deal of tautology; coincidences of thought and expression to perplex a young civilization before it was steady on its feet. Characters and pursuits must have resembled the modern game of word-making, where random letters of the alphabet are dealt into your hand, and where you may form an "at" or a "so" as fast as your neighbor, and from inspiration quite as direct. We allow yet for duplicated intelligence; we practise the daily amenity of agreeing with Bugg that it is growing warmer, and with Norfolk-Howard that the temperature is rising. In the conduct of life we ape one another as we will, collide, interchange, amalgamate, twang on the same harp, jerk by the same puppet-string; but you will observe that there is little suspicion of mockery or imitation in all that, and if one figure adopt the gait of another it is generally looked upon as nobody's business. Do I consider it a servile thing of my neighbor that he buys his dinner at the spot where I bought mine yesterday? that he also takes mutton, for my given price per pound? No one ever speculated how the late Mr. Shelley could afford to die at twenty-nine, by accident, when Sir John Suckling, a thistledown fellow, but a knightly and considerable poet in his day, had died at twenty-nine, by accident, before him. And if a commentator only had thought of it, how suspicious a case might be made out against a deserter who dropped his bayonet at Gettysburg, when Q. Horatius Flaccus had antedated him, with a shield, at Philippi! Truly, to precedents of transient action we are indifferent.

The same risks are run time after time; more than one perished upon the enemy's spears, for the sake of a shouted warning to the sleeping camp, or hoped with cheery courage, in the fangs of shipwreck, that Heaven is as near by sea as by land; yes! and some sufferer after golden-hearted Sidney has passed the untasted water to lips more parched than his own. Oh, we can never have too much of that sort of repetition! We say it uplifts, and "makes for righteousness," and carries urgings to the breast of every generous boy, for instance, who studies history. We find it worth while, thinking of him, to adduce example on example of the same kind of heroism. If he does not hear the deed accredited to some famous leader, he will come across it in the piecemeal annals of an obscure state. If he be familiar with all its citations, so much the better; it looks as though magnanimity were a common thing, as indeed, secretly, it hath ever been, in that dim work-a-day world which looms beyond him. Or, should he suspect the first venturesome pioneer of glory to have been the inspiration and spur of those who followed, is it not very fair and honorable that it be so? that virtue should thus multiply itself again and again, as stars are born of the bursting of a star?

Just as it was worth while in these old stir-about hearts to repeat their fine tragedy, so that, in one way or another, the ideal and influ

ence of it should be made plain to the world, a pleader might contend that it is not uncommendable in Mr. Pope to ransack Lucan, Boileau, Cowley, and Dryden, and insert their neat and piercing truths, like jewels reset, in his own circulatory pages. Moralists take into consideration, in case of theft of the palpable sort, whether the criminal be in dire need of that which he stole: so must we judge the distinguished fraternity of literary purveyors. Who knows what hitches may have interrupted the Essay on Man, or the gallant security-though my Lord Byron was no trained pilferer-of Childe Harold itself? Persons who write epics have been starved out of all discretion ere the end of a week's interview with the muse. Can sublime pentameters posting on towards the amelioration of mankind languish in full sight of a poor skeleton's little coffers? What a pity to have missed a brave chime of modern verse, simply because one of the forgotten choir had pealed it out too early! The art of saying over being the universal art of literature, it behooves us to frown down awkward attempts at that risky trade, and to wink at any which are clever, and serve a gentle use. Surely, it is palliation for Thomas Gray's extreme of communism that his confiscated "gem of purest ray serene," and its sisterly "flower born to blush unseen," should bring the thought of hidden beauty to thousands who never otherwise would have been consoled with an inkling of it. The abominable fallacy that the end justifies the means never looks so winning as in this light.

The miracle is, ultimately, not that we confuse our identities, but that our diversity and originality are what they are. With legs of proximate length, one walker minces, and another strides; with climatic influences to share with the tenor, the bass still sings bass; and despite the equalizing curriculum of the schools, A. evolves a romancer, and B. a geometrician! In literature, it is thrice wonderful, "and yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping," that a human being should put forth anything which has not been bandied about for centuries. Writers give out, in a large sense, what they take in; and what they take in is as old as the earth, and as broad, and as free to the first comer. We each undergo the stupendous sameness of mortality, and every influence meanwhile, in the air above and the waters under, is against an elective course of mind, and for levelling, docking, and conforming.

The prime difficulty with a scrupulous poor dog of an author is to keep his head clear in the rush and anxiety of composition, and to be sure he carries off no hat nor umbrella besides his own. He wants what he believes to be his style and his subject; those which, at any rate, he has grown used to calling his. He has no objection to make a parody or modification of another's work, which is as if, having appropriated a strange hat, he returns it with a cock's feather stuck in it by way of comment. Over any matter of sober credence his fancy, without irreverence, may choose to frisk. If an Egyptian philosopher has delivered himself of solemn carven theses on the sacred leek, to-morrow's gardener may still evolve a treatise on the onion, or a featherbrain may inquire, with mock gravity, into its psychological qualities. But in general, our scrupulous gentleman disdains affiliations. His chisel