so often, which we certainly did, day and night, breakfast and supper, and no thanks to you? No, sir! ha, ha!” I can see her flaunting out of my sitting-room as she speaks, with a strident laugh, and snapping her dingily-gloved fingers at the door. Oh, Philip, Philip! To think that you were such a coward as to go and tell her! But I pardon him. From my heart I pity and pardon him. For the step which he is meditating, you may be sure that the young man himself does not feel the smallest need of pardon or pity. He is in a state of happiness so crazy that it is useless to reason with him. Not being at all of a poetical turn originally, the wretch is actually perpetrating verse in secret, and my servants found fragments of his manuscript on the dressing-table in his bedroom. _Heart_ and _art_, _sever_ and _for ever_, and so on; what stale rhymes are these? I do not feel at liberty to give in entire the poem which our maid found in Mr. Philip’s room, and brought sniggering to my wife, who only said, “Poor thing!” The fact is, it was too pitiable. Such maundering rubbish! Such stale rhymes, and such old thoughts! But then, says Laura, “I daresay all people’s love-making is not amusing to their neighbours; and I know who wrote not very wise love-verses when he was young.” No, I won’t publish Philip’s verses, until some day he shall mortally offend me. I can recall some of my own written under similar circumstances with twinges of shame; and shall drop a veil of decent friendship over my friend’s folly.