It has been the experience of my life that it is your quiet people who, above all other children of men, are set in their ways and intense in their opinions. Their very reserve and silence are a fortification behind which all their peculiarities grow and thrive at their leisure, without encountering those blows and shocks which materially modify more outspoken natures. It is owing to the peculiar power of quietness that one sometimes sees characters fashioning themselves in a manner the least to be expected from the circumstances and associates which surround them. As a fair white lily grows up out of the bed of meadow muck, and without note or comment rejects all in the soil that is alien from her being, and goes on fashioning her own silver cup side by side with weeds that are drawing coarser nutriment from the soil, so we often see a refined and gentle nature, by some singular internal force, unfolding itself by its own laws, and confirming itself in its own beliefs, as wholly different from all that surround it as is the lily from the ragweed. There are persons, in fact, who seem to grow almost wholly from within, and on whom the teachings, the doctrine, and the opinions of those around them, produce little or no impression. * * * * * [Sidenote: Amusements.] It may be set down, I think, as a general axiom, that people feel the need of amusements less and less, precisely in proportion as they have solid reasons for being happy. * * * * * [Sidenote: Repression.] Perhaps my readers may have turned over a great, flat stone some time in their rural rambles, and found under it little clovers, and tufts of grass pressed to earth, flat, white, and bloodless, but still growing, stretching, creeping towards the edges, where their plant-instinct tells them there is light and deliverance. The kind of life that the little Tina led, under the care of Miss Asphyxia, resembled that of these poor clovers. It was all shut down and repressed, but growing still. * * * * * [Sidenote: Sympathy.] I felt a cleaving of spirit to him that I had never felt towards any human being before,—a certainty that something had come to me in him that I had always been wanting,—and I was too glad for speech. * * * * * [Sidenote: Soul-relation.] Is it not true that, as we grow older, the relationship of souls will make itself felt? PALMETTO LEAVES. [Sidenote: Life renewed.]