On a warm evening in the month of August, a large party met at the house of one of the villagers, when, as was usual at such gatherings, the subject of conversation turned upon the queer habits of Felix Deford. One fair young creature, who had once been favored with a sight of him, gave it as her opinion, that not having heeded the judicious counsel of Sophocles, “never let woman rob thee of thy wits,” his hopes had been wrecked in some sad and unsuccessful love adventure. In giving vent to her sympathies for the unfortunate Felix, she did not refrain from denouncing the cruelty of some of her sex in a manner which modestly intimated, that her own heart would never have permitted her to send so devoted a lover as he must have been into miserable exile. This was immediately taken up by a sharp-visaged, hatchet-faced specimen of the ancient maiden lady, whose beauty, had she lived ages ago, would scarcely have induced the most forlorn Grecian gallant to pronounce her, in the expressive and complimentary phrase of his time, “a virgin who gained oxen.” For forty years she had experienced the terrors of single blessedness, from what cause she could not divine, which had by no means rendered her patient and charitable. She unhesitatingly advanced it as her judgment, that his conduct, if love had anything to do with it, resulted rather from remorse of conscience for past offences than from female cruelty. Examples of this kind were not wanting, and she herself had once known a Frenchman the recollection of whose wicked amours so preyed upon his mind that he voluntarily banished himself from the sight of men--as severe a punishment, it was thought, as could possibly be inflicted upon a Frenchman. An old lady here interposed, and related a story of a melancholy individual, whose many deplorable mishaps had fully convinced him of the ancient theory, that each one was born under a good or an evil genius. It had been his direful fate to have been ushered into the world under one of the latter kind. Whatever he had been prompted to undertake, soon gave evidence that, however fickle a goddess Fortune may be, to him she was ever constant: not that she loved him, but merely because she was even more patient and spiteful than an affronted Corsair. Nothing would prosper under his protection, though he had been as watchful as a vestal virgin. He had frequently envied the Grecian youth who, killing his step-mother in endeavoring to hurl a stone at a dog, exclaimed, “Fortune had a better aim than I.” If luck had been half as favorably inclined towards him, some fortunate accident would not so long have permitted a Fury in the form of a termagant wife to have added to his troubles. After wooing Fortune for a number of years to no purpose, he at length determined at least to escape her frowns and punishments, if he could not share her civilities; and therefore betook himself to the wood to adopt the life of the anchorite. What became of him after this was never