"Go it then," said my uncle, "and joy go with you; the chariot of the sun is the place for a prospect! Up with you into it, my boy, that kind of driving is interesting; in fact, when I was young, I should have liked it myself, but if you don't want to kick up as great a bobbery as Phæton did, you'd better mind his father's advice: spare the whip, and use the reins with those fiery horses of the future." "But, now," said I, "as the final result of all this, will you help Caroline?" "Yes, I will; soberly and seriously, I will. I'll drive over there and have a little talk with the girl, as soon as you're gone." "And, uncle," said I, "if you wish to gain influence with her, don't flatter nor compliment; examine her, and appoint her tasks exactly as you would those of a young man in similar circumstances. You will please her best so; she is ready to do work, and make serious studies; she is of a thorough, earnest nature, and will do credit to your teaching." "What a pity she wasn't born a boy," said my uncle, under his breath. "Well, let you and me do what we can," said I, "to bring in such a state of things in this world that it shall no longer be said of any woman that it was a pity not to have been born a man." Subsequently I spoke to my mother on the same subject and gave her an account of my interview with Caroline. I think that my mother, in her own secret heart, had cherished very much the same hopes for me that had been expressed by Uncle Jacob. Caroline was an uncommon person, the star of the little secluded neighborhood, and my mother had seen enough of her to know that, though principally absorbed in the requirements of a very hard domestic sphere she possessed an uncommon character and great capabilities. Between her and my mother, however, there had been that silence which often exists between two natures, both sensitive and both reticent, who seem to act as non-conductors to each other. Caroline stood a little in awe of the moral and religious force of my mother, and my mother was a little chilled by the keen intellectualism of Caroline. There are people that cannot understand each other without an interpreter, and it is not unfrequently easier for men and women to speak confidentially to each other than to their own sex. There are certain aspects in which each sex is sure of more comprehension than from its own. I served, in this case, as the connecting wire of the galvanic battery to pass the spark of sympathetic comprehension between these two natures.