Yes, for the souls who desire God the false interests of the state are but a glebe--a glebe the laws to which the conscience refuses to submit--a glebe the will of the sovereign, and a glebe also the traditions of his dynasty. These people, let others call them free, and, on the faith of their lords, let them also call themselves free; they are none the less people in serfdom--souls chained to the glebe. What glory for Alexander II., if, after having delivered bodies from the servitude of the glebe, he would also deliver souls! What glory, if, after having delivered his own subjects from it, he would labor also to set others free! STRAY LEAVES FROM A PASSING LIFE. CHAPTER I. MR. CULPEPPER MAKES A PROPOSAL--A RENCOUNTER IN A CHURCHYARD. It was one of those golden November mornings that throw a mystic glamour over New York. A warm haze draped the great city, softening its deformities, blending its beauties. In its magic light the very street-cars took on a romantic air, as they sped along loaded with their living freight. The bales of goods on the sidewalk, huddled together in careless profusion, were no longer the danger which they are generally supposed to be by elderly gentlemen who have due regard for life and limb, but gracious droppings rather from Pandora’s box, raining down fresh and bright from the hands of the genial goddess. What in the garish sun were vulgar business houses filled with sober goods and peopled with staring and sleek-combed clerks, assumed under this gorgeous drapery the aspect of mystic temples of commerce, where silent and solemn-eyed priests stood patiently all the day long to call in the passers-by to worship. The lofty policeman, looming like a statue at the corner, was not the ferocious, peanut-chewing being that he is commonly supposed to be, but a beneficent guardian of the great temple of peace. The busy crowds of brisk business men that hurried along, untouched as yet by the toil and the soil of the day, were fresh-faced and clear-eyed, chatty and cheerful. Thompson stepped out as cheerily as though he were just beginning that strange task, on which so many ambitious mortals have gone down, of performing his thousand miles in a thousand hours; for Thompson, happy man! knew not as yet what was so calmly awaiting him on his desk--that heavy bill that he was bound to meet, but which, strange to say, had quite slipped his memory. And there is Johnson walking arm-in-arm with Jones, Johnson’s face wreathed in sunny smiles the while. Johnson’s heart is gay and his step light, and he feels the happy influence of the morning. Jones is sadly in want of a confidential clerk, and his friend is dilating on the treasure that he himself possesses--that very clerk who, he learns on reaching his office, absconded last night with a fearful amount of Johnson’s property. Nor, on the other hand, does that eager-faced youngster, the shining seams of whose garments tell of more years than his seamless face and brow, know