“I don't believe it agrees with this banjoseph being an object of virtue,” he said. “What shall it be, ladies? Something light and gay, adapted to disperse gloomy reflections?” He played a fandango. “How do you like that? It has a tinge of melancholy in it, and yet it's lively too, as a friend of mine used to say about the Dead March.” “Was his name Berry?” asked Miss Swan. “Not Alonzo W., Jr.,” returned Berry tranquilly, and he and Miss Swan began to joke together. “I know a friend of Mr. Evans's,” said Lemuel to Miss Carver. “Mr. Sewell. Have you ever heard him preach?” “Oh yes, indeed. We go nearly every Sunday morning.” “I nearly always go in the evening now,” said Lemuel. “Don't you like him?” “Yes,” said the girl. “There's something about him--I don't know what--that doesn't leave you feeling how bad you are, but makes you want to be better. He helps you so; and he's so clear. And he shows that he's had all the mean and silly thoughts that you have. I don't know--it's as if he were talking for each person alone.” “Yes, that is exactly the way I feel!” Lemuel was proud of the coincidence. He said, to commend himself further to Miss Carver, “I have just been round to see him.” “I should think you would value his acquaintance beyond anything,” said the girl. “Is he just as earnest and simple as he is in the pulpit?” “He's just the same, every way.” Lemuel went a little further; “I knew him before I came to Boston. He boarded one summer where we lived.” As he spoke he thought of the grey, old, unpainted house, and of his brother-in-law with his stocking-feet on the stove-hearth, and his mother's bloomers; he thought of his arrest, and his night in the police-station, his trial, and the Wayfarer's Lodge; and he wondered that he could think of such things and still look such a girl in the face. But he was not without that strange joy in their being unknown to her which reserved and latent natures feel in mere reticence, and which we all experience in some degree when we talk with people and think of our undiscovered lives. They went on a long time, matching their opinions and feelings about many things, as young people do, and fancying that much of what they said was new with them. When he came away after ten o'clock, he thought of one of the things that Sewell had said about the society of refined and noble women: it was not so much what they said or did that helped; it was something in them that made men say and do their best, and help themselves to be refined and noble men, to make the most of themselves in their presence. He believed that this was what Miss Carver had done, and he thought how different it was with him when he came away from an evening with Statira. Again he experienced that compassion for her, in the midst of his pride and exultation; he asked himself what he could do to help her; he did not see how she could be changed. Berry followed him downstairs, and wanted to talk the evening over.