—Did I talk all this off to the schoolmistress?—Why, no,—of course not. I have been talking with you, the reader, for the last ten minutes. You don’t think I should expect any woman to listen to such a sentence as that long one, without giving her a chance to put in a word? —What did I say to the schoolmistress?—Permit me one moment. I don’t doubt your delicacy and good-breeding; but in this particular case, as I was allowed the privilege of walking alone with a very interesting young woman, you must allow me to remark, in the classic version of a familiar phrase, used by our Master Benjamin Franklin, it is _nullum tui negotii_. When the schoolmistress and I reached the school-room door, the damask roses I spoke of were so much heightened in color by exercise that I felt sure it would be useful to her to take a stroll like this every morning, and made up my mind I would ask her to let me join her again. EXTRACT FROM MY PRIVATE JOURNAL. (_To be burned unread_.) I am afraid I have been a fool; for I have told as much of myself to this young person as if she were of that ripe and discreet age which invites confidence and expansive utterance. I have been low-spirited and listless, lately,—it is coffee, I think,—(I observe that which is bought _ready-ground_ never affects the head,)—and I notice that I tell my secrets too easily when I am downhearted. There are inscriptions on our hearts, which, like that on Dighton Rock, are never to be seen except at dead-low tide. There is a woman’s footstep on the sand at the side of my deepest ocean-buried inscription! —Oh, no, no, no! a thousand times, no!—Yet what is this which has been shaping itself in my soul?—Is it a thought?—is it a dream?—is it a _passion_?—Then I know what comes next. —The Asylum stands on a bright and breezy hill; those glazed corridors are pleasant to walk in, in bad weather. But there are iron bars to all the windows. When it is fair, some of us can stroll outside that very high fence. But I never see much life in those groups I sometimes meet;—and then the careful man watches them so closely! How I remember that sad company I used to pass on fine mornings, when I was a schoolboy!—B., with his arms full of yellow weeds,—ore from the gold mines which he discovered long before we heard of California,—Y., born to millions, crazed by too much plum-cake, (the boys said,) dogged, explosive,—made a Polyphemus of my weak-eyed schoolmaster, by a vicious flirt with a stick,—(the multi-millonnaires sent him a trifle, it was said, to buy another eye with; but boys are jealous of rich folks, and I don’t doubt the good people made him easy for life,)—how I remember them all!