"But there is a very great one by implication," answered the lieutenant. "For instance, the line--'Hear me pay my dying vows.'--What more could I profess than to die for love of her! And a lady that is died for, must of course be superlatively charming. In short, I finished the verses, and I must say they were very handsomely transcribed. Now, do not laugh. Is it not more excusable to take some pride in writing a good hand, than to boast of scribbling a bad one? I have known persons who seemed absolutely to plume themselves on the illegibility of their scrawls; because, unfortunately, so many men of genius have indulged in a most shameful style of chirography. "Well, I viewed my performance with much satisfaction, and then proceeded to look attentively through the album (I had as yet but glanced over it), to see if any one excelled me in calligraphy. What was my horror, when I found among a multitude of Lines to Zephyrs and Dew-drops, and Stanzas to Rose-buds and Violets, the identical verses that I had just copied from Pope! Some other poor fellow, equally hard pressed, had been beforehand with me, and committed the very same theft; which, in his case, appeared to me enormous. I pronounced it 'flat burglary,' and could have consigned him to the penitentiary 'for the whole term of his natural life.' To be compelled to commit a robbery is bad enough, but to be anticipated in the very same robbery, and to find that you have burdened your conscience, and jeoparded your self-respect for nothing, is worse still." "There was one way," observed Orinda, "in which you could have extricated yourself from the dilemma. You might have cut out the leaf, and written something else on another." "That was the very thing I finally determined on doing," replied Sunderland. "So after a pause of deep distress, I took my penknife, and did cut out the leaf: resolving that for my next 'writing-piece,' I would go as far back as the poets of Elizabeth's time. While pleasing myself with the idea that all was now safe, I perceived, in moving the book, that another leaf was working its way out; and I found, to my great consternation, that I had cut too deeply, and that I had loosened a page on which was faintly drawn in a lady's hand a faint Cupid shooting at a faint heart, encircled with a wreath of faint flowers. I recollected that my 'fair one with locks of gold,' had pointed out to me this performance as 'the sweetest thing in her album.'" "By-the-bye," remarked Orinda, "when you found so much difficulty in composing verses, why did you not substitute a drawing?" "Oh!" replied the lieutenant, "though I am at no loss in military drawing, and can finish my bastions, and counterscarps, and ravelins, with all due neatness, yet my miscellaneous sketches are very much in the style of scene-painting, and totally unfit to be classed with the smooth, delicate, half-tinted prettinesses that are peculiar to ladies' albums."