Now, a remarkable occurrence in the parish took place. Aaron, _alias_ Haroun, fell in love, and took to courting Elizabeth Thomas, _alias_ Sugar-cane, _alias_ Cassabos Souccar, the tweenie maid. It took the whole parish by surprise, for Elizabeth was not beautiful; she had not the eyes or the frame, or the _svelte_ movements or the elastic tread of the light gazelle. She was a somewhat heavily formed, broad-shouldered, pudding-faced damsel, who could not cross a room without rattling all the chimney ornaments, and who had no more imagination and genius than has a duck. And in what did the attraction consist? Why had Aaron not become enamoured of the lady’s-maid, a most willowy person with a very sweet and refined face? Why not with the kitchen-maid, the Sprig of Coral, who had indeed coralline lips, and who in time would know how to boil a potato and do a chop so as not to be done to leather. But a tweenie! and such a tweenie! The whole parish discussed it for a month. It was most astounding that the man who romanced about every one and everything and every place, should make such dead prose of his own love affair. However, after this had been debated in the servants’ hall, at the forge, in the stable, at the tavern, each such debate ended with some one remarking sententiously, “After all, it is his affair and not mine.” It is, however, a mistake to say that Aaron’s courtship was prosaic. That it was not so was proved by one of his letters to Elizabeth Thomas, which the girl carelessly left about; and it got read, copied, and distributed through the village, and excited much admiration at the splendour of the style, till some one detected the original, of which it was but a copy, in the story of Abdul Hassan and Schemselnihar. Here is the epistle— “AARON PRICE, _carpenter_, to ELIZABETH THOMAS, _tweenie maid_. “Deprived of your presence, I seek to continue the illusion, and converse with you by means of these ill-formed lines, which afford me some pleasure, while I am prevented the happiness of speaking to you. “Patience, they say, is the remedy of all evils; yet those I suffer are increased instead of relieved by it. Although your image is indelibly engraven on my heart, my eyes nevertheless wish again to behold the original. “These sentiments, which my fingers trace, and in expressing which I feel such inconceivable pleasure that I cannot repeat them too often, proceed from the bottom of my heart, from that incurable wound you have made in it; a wound which I bless a thousand times, notwithstanding the cruel sufferings I endure in your absence.