There never had been any love-making, in the direct meaning of the term, between John Wilmeter and Anna Updyke. They had known each other so long and so intimately, that both regarded the feeling of kindness that each knew subsisted, as a mere fraternal sort of affection. “Jack is Sarah’s brother,” thought Anna, when she permitted herself to reason on the subject at all; “and it is natural that I should have more friendship for him than for any other young man.” “Anna is Sarah’s most intimate friend,” thought Jack, “and that is the long and short of my attachment for _her_. Take away Sarah, and Anna would be nothing to me; though she is so pretty, and clever, and gentle, and lady-like. I must like those Anna likes, or it might make us both unhappy.” This was the reasoning of nineteen, and when Anna Updyke was just budding into young womanhood; at a later day, habit had got to be so much in the ascendant, that neither of the young people _thought_ much on the subject at all. The preference was strong in each—so strong, indeed, as to hover over the confines of passion, and quite near to its vortex; though the long accustomed feeling prevented either from entering into its analysis. The attachments that grow up with our daily associations, and get to be so interwoven with our most familiar thoughts, seldom carry away those who submit to them, in the whirlwind of passion; which are much more apt to attend sudden and impulsive love. Cases do certainly occur in which the parties have long known each other, and have lived on for years in a dull appreciation of mutual merit—sometimes with prejudices and alienation active between them; when suddenly all is changed, and the scene that was lately so tranquil and tame becomes tumultuous and glowing, and life assumes a new charm, as the profound emotions of passion chase away its dulness; substituting hope, and fears, and lively wishes, and soul-felt impressions in its stead. This is not usual in the course of the most wayward of all our impulses; but it does occasionally happen, brightening existence with a glow that might well be termed divine, were the colours bestowed derived from a love of the Creator, in lieu of that of one of his creatures. In these sudden awakenings of dormant feelings, some chord of mutual sympathy, some deep-rooted affinity is aroused, carrying away their possessors in a torrent of the feelings. Occasionally, wherever the affinity is active, the impulse natural and strongly sympathetic, these sudden and seemingly wayward attachments are the most indelible, colouring the whole of the remainder of life; but oftener do they take the character of mere impulse, rather than that of deeper sentiment, and disappear, as they were first seen, in some sudden glow of the horizon of the affections.