partners, the regimental band, and the colors tastefully festooning the whitewashed walls. And now, my dear Miss Sarah, we are actually ashamed of the contact with one of those whom once it was our highest glory to be acquainted with! You may remember a certain Captain Morris, who was stationed at Bruff,--dark, with very black eyes, and most beautiful teeth; he was very silent in company, and, indeed, we knew him but slightly, for he chanced to have some altercation with pa on the bench one day, and, as I hear he was all in the right, pa did not afterwards forgive him. Well, here he is now, having left the army,--I don't know if on half-pay, or sold out altogether,--but here he is, travelling for the benefit of his mother's health,--a very old and infirm lady, to whom he is dotingly attached. She fretted so much when she discovered that his regiment was ordered abroad to the Cape, that he had no other resource than to leave the service! He told me so himself. "I had nobody else in the world," said he, "who felt any interest in my fortunes; _she_ had made a hundred sacrifices for me. It was but fair I should make one for _her_." He knew he was surrendering position and prospect forever,--that to him no career could ever open again; but he had placed a duty high above all considerations of self, and so he parted with comrades and pursuit, with everything that made up his hope and his object, and descended to a little station of unobtrusive, undistinguished humility, satisfied to be the companion of a poor, feeble old lady! He has as much as confessed to me that their means are very small. It was an accidental admission with reference to something he thought of doing, but which he found to be too expensive; and the avowal was made so easily, so frankly, so free from any false shame on one side, or any unworthy desire to entrap sympathy on the other! It was as if he spoke of something which indeed concerned him, but in no wise gave the mainspring to his thoughts or actions! He came to visit us here; but his having left the service, coupled with our present taste for grand acquaintance, were so little in his favor that I believed he would not have repeated his call. An accidental service, however, that he was enabled to render mamma and Mary Anne at a railroad station the other day, and where but for him they might have been involved in considerable difficulties, has opened a chance of further intimacy, for he has already been here two mornings, and is coming this evening to tea.