In these stirring times of revolution and anarchy, of experiment and discovery, of mighty changes and astounding vicissitudes, it would seem as if a story so simple and uneventful as that I am about to relate, ought to be prefaced by an apology for its very simplicity. But let the world wag as it may there will ever be a few dwellers by the woodland brook, a few sojourners at the cottage door, a few wayfarers along the by-paths and green lanes of quiet life who will like to listen to the “still small voice,” that counts the throbbings of a single human heart amid all this sounding tramp of nations. The tale of wild adventure and startling incident charms us by its very wildness and improbability—the story of life’s many-colored changes draws us from our own commonplace cares—the glowing record of passionate love comes to us like a realization of our own early ideal, and for all these narratives there are many readers. But who will ponder over the quiet domestic details of a life which wasted slowly away, unmarked even by the ordinary events which checker woman’s tranquil existence, and colored with so sober a gray that even the rose-tint of love’s romance scarce brightened its dull hue? Who will read such a record save those whose own life presents to their remembrance the same sober volume of tear-blurred pages? Earth holds too many such, but the world knows not of them. Life has been to them a monotonous round of anxiety and care—a November day of clouds unbroken by a single sunbeam, and thus youth passes away, and hope dies out, and in time they forget their own identity, living on to old age with their souls dead within them and their hearts dry as dust. “The heart may break yet brokenly live on,” but even this is happiness compared to the slow, _chronic_ heart-withering, which in its dull but certain progress, leaves no remembrance of any healthier or more vivid existence in the past. The father of Minnie Clifton was one of those gifted and graceful (too often also GRACELESS) persons on whom society generally bestows the mysteriously comprehensive epithet of “_fascinating_.” He was exceedingly handsome, possessed many of those superficial accomplishments which the indiscriminating and good-natured world regards as the blossomings of genius, and was master of the most perfect tact in the display of his various gifts. It is in no wise extraordinary therefore that the elegant Charles Clifton should have been one of the most consummate “_lady-killers_” of his time, and that the innumerable hearts he was said to have broken, or at least cracked, during his fashionable career should have won for him, among graver people, the despicable title of a “_male flirt_.” At the age of forty-five, when his credit with his tailor was utterly exhausted, and when his too faithful mirror convinced him that— “Years may fly with the _wings_ of the _hawk_; but, alas! They are marked by the _feet_ of the _crow_,”