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Only Mr. Merkes would have nursed the thought with indignation, whereas Wall throttles and casts it out as soon as it is born. He seats himself with a "Thank you" in the black cushion of the nearest office-chair, and takes the crisp morning paper that he may glance over the top of it around him.

"Can't do any thing with you, Ellis," says Mr. Langdon, who has now reached the railed space, and, with hand thrust through the rails, is working the impatient fingers thereof under the nose of the clerk. "Check, Jones, twenty thousand five hundred!"

"Would endow a professor's chair!" says Wall to himself, with a rising respect for both the gentlemen.

Mr. Ellis has the check, and without a word is gone. Mr. Langdon is hurrying out after him, when Mr. Wall rises and bows and catch

ing immediately. "How are you? Pleasant weather!" Mr. Wall shakes his extended hand. "Cotton is it? or railway?" asks the broker, with a business smile.

"Something as interesting to you as either, I hope," says the young minister, returning his smile, but feeling exceedingly uncertain whether his business will be really and truly as interesting to his new friend. Church and gospel and preacher seem things so unreal and out of place in that busy spot.

It is a noble office, twenty by forty feet at least; the floor covered with cocoa-nut matting, the walls hung round with port-folios bearing in large letters upon their sides the names of all the leading ports of America and Europe. There are handsome paintings too of the cele-es his quick eye. brated clippers and steamships of the day. The "Ah, yes!" says the broker, understandthree huge doors standing open upon the busy street; the library of journals and ledgers, each two feet long; the glimpse of several lengthy tables in an inner room covered with different samples of cotton in brown paper parcels; the vast iron house rather than safe in one corner; the stout negro porter, apron on, coming in and going out; the constant ingress of clerks with long, thin books in their breast-pockets, who hold brief and cabalistic conversation with the clerk, who never even nods to them in coming or recognized their leaving, but writes steadily on through it all; every thing impresses the young minister with the fact that this office is quite a different place from his quiet apartment in the third story of the Seminary, so very high and dry above the bustling world. And he enjoys it wonderfully from force of reaction, and has a deep respect for the clerk writing away at his desk. From the moment he had read the letter of invitation Hoppleton had dwindled into a much smaller place, and his uncle's home had seemed rather dull than not. The instant he had stepped, valise in hand, on the train, at the end of the stage part of his trip from Hoppleton, he had caught the contagion of enterprise and energy. He respected the conductor collecting tickets, had a lurking admiration for the dirty stoker, considered the engineer a hero, rather underrates himself, in fact, in comparison with all the pushing throng. In strong contrast with the eddy in which he has lain, there is a grandeur in the torrent of practical life which exaggerates itself to him by the very contrast.

And now this tall, thin, hazel-eyed man who comes in with such a swift step must be Mr. Jacob Langdon. He is rather disappointed. He had imagined him portly, white-haired, and with an overflow of gold watch-chain over a white waistcoat-never mind. He rises to greet and be greeted, but Mr. Langdon regards him just at that instant no more than the spittoon at his feet.

"Say twenty thousand two fifty, and I'll do it," he says, as he comes rapidly in without looking over his shoulder at the weazen, little, dried-up old man who follows upon his footsteps like his shadow.

'Suppose you would! No. Twenty thouFand five hundred," replies that individual, in sharp, quick tones.

"Very glad indeed to see you!" says the broker, becoming on the spot the church officer, when his visitor has explained who he is. And there is a Sabbath change in his tones as he learns of his visitor exactly when he arrived, at what hotel he stopped, how he left his uncle-still standing, however, and in a rapid manner.

"Now," says the cotton broker, at last, "it's just twelve-we dine at four. Here are the papers, or look around the city a little. Only be here, if you please, say at twenty minutes to four, and I'll show you the way out. Goodmorning!" and he is gone into the maelstrom that circles past his front-door.

He

Mr. Merkes would have been greatly aggrieved at so curt a disposal of himself. Wall is conscious of a rising tendency in him of that kind, but crushes it on the spot in a new admiration of the energetic business man. has a strong disposition himself to plunge into the current of commerce, would like exceedingly some pressing call along the wharves and into the warehouses. After years of seclusion there is a romance, a fascination in the rapid footsteps, and quick speech, and talk of dol-. lars, with a sense, too, of being himself quite an idler, altogether a child.

It is a compliment to Wall, however, that Mr. Jones, the clerk, comes at this juncture from inside his cage, introduces himself, and shakes hands. Mr. Jones has a quill of blue ink behind one ear, a quill of red ink behind the other, another of black ink in his mouth. He removes this from his lips to say:

"Very glad to make your acquaintance, Sir. You look much younger than I expected to see. I knew your uncle well. Many a time have I heard (there's the gun of the New York steamer coming in-hurry down, Peter) him preach. I don't belong to the First church myself. No;

some of us went out from it a year or so ago to begin a little enterprise in one of the neglected districts. Sunday-school in the upper room of an engine-house, you know; preaching there at ten and at night. Take a seat, Captain Buff; ready to sail? Papers all right." And Mr. Jones has to go into his den again to serve the last arrival. But Mr. Wall has had opportunity to observe that Mr. Jones is not only a clerk, but a gentleman.

He feels reassured, and with a word of adieu, which Mr. Jones had not the time to observe, he sallies forth into the tide without, until he finds himself near his hotel.

"Bill already settled, luggage carried off," says the clerk at the hotel bar in answer to an inquiry. "On an order from Jacob Langdon," is the explanation.

And so he guesses his way to the office of Langdon, Burke, and Co. again. Arrived there, he finds a somewhat shabby-looking gentleman standing at the desk in subdued conversation with Mr. Jones, who is writing steadily on none the less.

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"A great deal, only the head of that establishment couldn't refuse, under the circumstances. It is not three years ago he came to me in a worse fix than this man. I got him in there then. Of course, he is willing to help any other poor fellow."

"I must say, Mr. Langdon," says his companion, after a pause, "I envy you the opportunity you have of doing such a deed.”

"Yes; it is more Jones than myself. People can do any thing with him, and he can do any thing he pleases with me. But here we are; walk in."

The young minister looks up and sees that they are in front of a noble mansion with cast iron veranda for both stories, handsome plot in front with tesselated pavement leading from the gate, bordered with conch shells and stone vases. The master of the house rang at the gate as he entered, and now the front-door opens at his touch.

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'Mistress in?" he inquires of the whiteaproned colored man that opens the door. "Just in, Sir," is the reply.

"Dinner, then, soon as you please," says Mr. Langdon, showing his guest into the parlor and himself passing on up stairs to wash and tell his wife.

A moment or two after Mr. Langdon comes in with a rapid step, and a "Ah, Mr. Wall, how are you by this time?" In obedience, however, to a Mr. Langdon, a moment if you please!" from his clerk, Mr. Langdon retires with that Dinner comes. It is all a dinner could be, clerk into the room with the long unpainted cot- and Mr. Wall partakes of it with a feeling of ton tables. The clerk seems to have a good deal ease and enjoyment, as if he had been out on a to say, and his principal only listens and nods. camping excursion during the last few years, As they come out the clerk introduces his em- but had got home again. Mr. Merkes would ployer to the gentleman in somewhat shabby have been estimating the cost, and blaming the clothes, who looks thin and nervous. There extravagance, and adding another room to his is a rapid conversation between these last, of overcramped house from the proceeds of the which the young minister only catches the superb caster before him. His prevailing feelwords, "Wife and children—any thing on earthing would have been, "There is an awful wrong -great obligations-roll up my sleeves-any somewhere that you have all these things and I thing, Sir, any thing!"

"Ah, well! at your service now, Mr. Wall. Suppose we go," says Mr. Langdon at last, and they leave the office, the cotton broker keeping up a fragmentary conversation with the shabby gentleman, who accompanies them. In course of time they arrive at the doorway of a huge warehouse-like establishment.

"Be so kind as to wait for me a moment," says the broker to his guest, and disappears with his other companion inside.

"Had to take you out of your way," says Mr. Langdon, emerging, as he hurries along with Mr. Wall. "Jones has always something of the sort on hand. You'd hardly believe it, that person who came with us was president of a railroad once-not so long ago either. Broken to pieces. Came out here to find business. Places? 'I am willing to do any thing,' he says, 'to feed my family: if it's only employment for a few days; it is better than none at all.' I had no place for him, so I brought him here. He'll have to work hard enough from dawn till dark. But he'll get his bread." "Did you find any difficulty in securing him a place?" asks the young minister, as they hurry along, deeply interested.

don't. Never mind. You must have a bitter sorrow somewhere. Perhaps you have a drunken son down town, or an idiot child up stairs, or something. Perhaps you'll break yet it often happens." And so would Mr. Merkes console himself as he murmured steadily on—like a rivulet worried to death with perpetual pebbles in its path-against God.

Not so with Wall; he acknowledged to himself a keen enjoyment of the wealth of his host -but it is as if it is all his own. He feels entirely at home, and therefore seems so. He has a pleasant word for the children and a happy reply for his host, and, what a woman values more than diamonds or cashmeres, a deferential attention to every syllable of Mrs. Langdon. And he says very little himself at last, and is entirely at his ease.

"We will be glad if you will make out your list of hymns for to-morrow this afternoon,” says Mr. Langdon, as he shows his guest up stairs into his room.

In looking forward to the service the young minister expected to be quite nervous on that eventful Sabbath morning; he had even hopes that it would prove a rainy Sabbath. Yet he was only glad when he awoke the next morn

ing and found the day up before him bright and glad. He had anticipated having all the mixed and miserable feelings of one about making his appearance in the pulpit as a candidate on exhibition, bothered to put on the best manner there. But even his fears of being nervous were all forgotten as he dressed and sat down at the window to his morning devotions. He is not there as a candidate for any thing whatever; merely there in Heaven's Providence to preach, as he had been on his visit to Mr. Merkes. All he aims at is simply to preach. All he prays for is that he may do this to the profit of those that may hear, few or many. John's opinion at the family council had been as a soft, cool hand laid upon a fevered brow. He felt quietly ready for the morning service even by breakfast. So much so that, with his sermon safely in his head and heart instead of his breast-pocket, he requested to accompany Mr. Langdon to the Sabbath-school. There was a simple nature in the young minister, a perfect ease of manner, that would have put Mr. Langdon out a little. "Going to preach in our pulpit, and so cool about it!" he would have thought, with some displeasure at his young guest, if that guest had not seemed so entirely yet quietly at home. Was it intellect and culture beginning to weigh its own against wealth? Or was it, rather, simple piety getting the mastery of circumstances, as it inherently will, though those circumstances towered at first like Alps against it? Not that he is in the least superior to any body else. Only he has, somehow, become aware of all the much that is wrong in him, and has for the moment got his heel upon that worse self!

a sermon is to astonish the audience with some quaint interpretation of Scripture never before dreamed of by mortal man; or to thrill by its sublime flight; or to move and melt by its pathos; or to convince by its irresistible reasoning; or to delight by its very audacity. The object of this genus of sermon, in a word, is effect, immediate effect, and the success of the same is measured by the degree of its effect. To this end the sermon is rewritten with a polishing of the marble worthy of Isocrates, who spent thirty-six years of steady rewriting upon his one oration. It is such a venture that no experienced minister launches himself from his pulpit cushion upon a splendid discourse unless he be very certain that the size of his congregation, the state of the weather, and his own exact measure of health and mood will warrant the attempt. Even then it is a risk. A bird flying in at the church window, a sudden shower or storm coming up, a dog yelping in the aisle, a child crying in a pew, will ruin the success of the most effective of this style of sermon.

Now Mr. Wall, too, had more than one splendid discourse among his sermons. They were the gems of his collection to him when he first arrived in Hoppleton. Somehow he had distrusted them since. And it is not a splendid discourse he now has determined to preach. It is one of the other genus of sermons, the faithful exposition of a text; poetry, vivid illustration, rhetoric, novelty, sublimity, pathos, logic, audacity, all Corinthianism of the sort left out, or breaking their way in by sheer force, and the discourse depending upon its plain, direct meaning for its effect.

The sumptuous church holds a still more sumptuous congregation; the organ peals in full tone; the choir have not one common-metre hymn to drag them down to the people in the pews below, and sing with free voices skyward. The young preacher preaches his ser

And the Sabbath-school prepared him to preach. He is beginning of late to find a deal of interest in the clear eyes of little children, a grace in the motion of their hands and a wisdom in their prattle he never remarked before. His attention has been drawn toward them by what he has heard of Mr. Merkes's entire neg-mon without let or hindrance, informing the lect of them, and his association with John has in some mysterious way ripened his heart to ward the young as well as toward every thing else. They wish him to deliver an address to the children; but he pleasantly declines, and talks to the children instead, imparting to them all the profit and twenty times the pleasure during the ten minutes he holds their bright eyes in his than during the formal delivery of an hour's set address. And then their singing too! Sweeter music this world knows not of than the voices of children.

hearers, to the best of his ability and with all his heart, of the meaning of God their Saviour in the text. A prayer, a hymn, the benediction, and this candidate for the vacant pulpit has settled his fate as far as that church is concerned forever.

JUL

EUSTACIE'S STORY.

ULIETTE came down the garden with that grand air of hers as if the world were made for Juliette. She held a letter in one hand, bearWhen he at last finds himself in the pulpiting a bold superscription, and she paused just itself almost as large as Mr. Merkes's church-before Eustacie, who was filling Louis's apron he is glad that he had selected for the occasion with the sweet June roses. the sermon he had. Every minister prepares two sorts of sermons. One kind is of the genus commonly known as "a splendid discourse." This is a sermon based on some striking text, filled with apt quotations from the poets, adorned with vivid illustrations, beautified with rhetorical curves and flourishes. The aim of such - VOL. XXXVIII.-No. 223.-8

"For me?" asked Eustacie, putting out her hand, and blushing up like any rose herself; but a look on Juliette's face caused her to falter and draw back.

"Give us joy," said this one then, without appearing to notice Eustacie's motion. "Cyril is going to marry; but I must away to grand

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wish you the joy which she forgot to wish Cyril." And my lady moved away with a heart that burned and leaped in her bosom, and eyes like javelins, that would have slain Eustacie, if eyes could slay.

While Miss Juliette imagined she was ordering affairs after her own mind, Fate had quietly assumed the dictatorship, and arranged for a somewhat different result than that which she had anticipated.

Each one said to her neighbor, "Did you know what a fine thing Mrs. Thornton's governess has done for herself?"

"Secured Mr. Trenholm, eh?"

"These governesses are so designing!"
"Well, I hope it will turn out well," which,

"One may as well die by the sword as the famine," in answer to her first sentence. "Bythe-way, Miss Eustacie, I thought that Cyril—” | considering the previous remarks, was as much "Cyril is going to marry," repeating Juliette's words.

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as to say she should be disappointed if it did. "When will they be married?"

"Oh, immediately of course; a bird in the hand, you know," and they nodded an understanding to each other, and swept apart.

Poor Eustacie, leaning over the balcony at Mrs. Oxford's, waiting for Louis, heard something of this, and it made her exceedingly uncomfortable. Was she designing? She could hardly decide. It is true that she was sorry for Trenholm; but then she was not sorry for

"I am attentive," said Eustacie, quietly. "I Juliette, at least not yet; perhaps she would be thought-"

"It is because I hoped you would see how much you were to me--the mere sight, the indifferent touch of your fingers, the everyday greetings, in the hope that you might grow accustomed to me; that so when I said, 'I love you,' as I say to-day, you would not find yourself amazed."

when she came to love him very much-if that ever happened; but she had designed nothing concerning him, except to do her best as his wife; she had never tried to attract him; he had come to her of his own accord, and so had Cyril; the difference was that this one had left her, while the other stepped into the breach, and a few tears fell to illustrate the case. Was it de

"But I do find myself amazed, Mr. Tren- signing in a harmless, friendless governess, with holm."

"So much the worse for me, since in that case you have not thought of me as a lover, and can give me nothing in return.

only a pittance in the bank, to accept a golden gift from fortune, because-because-in truth she found it very hard to say why she had accepted it. Perhaps it was merely because it had come in her path, and she wanted the courage to turn her back upon it; perhaps because a great deal of love on one side only was better than none any where had a value for her; perhaps because struggling up from a great blow,

He spoke so sadly, so half-interrogatively, as if he were loth to be thus assured, but had felt it must be so all along, that Eustacie looked up at him with returning color, and put out her hand: “Indeed, indeed, I can give you much—” and she was prone to catch at any support and comthere hesitated.

"But you can not love me?" he said.

fort. Still leaning there with her sad, perplexed face framed with the climbing roses that show

"I-I do not know. I had not thought of ered her with perfumed leaves at every rough it. If you love me-"

"If I love you!"

"If you love me-they say it makes all the difference in the world-I don't know-I might try, if you would like to have me."

Thus, half an hour later, Juliette found them still lingering in the neighborhood of the rosebushes.

breeze, she suffered what all must suffer who snatch at fortune from mere weariness rather than wait till events shall resolve themselves into the harmony that is sure to result sooner or later, here or there. Some one passing in the square below paused to gaze up at her and divine her thoughts, it may be. But she did not heed him. She was looking back through the

"Oh, Mr. Trenholm, are you there ?" she long vista of days, each one of which had been said. "When did you arrive?"

"I was here when you passed down with the news about Cyril. I thank you for it; it gave me impetus to follow his example. Eustacie has consented to let me love her.'

lighted by looks of love and words

"A thought too tender

For the commonplaces spoken;"

through the days she had once believed would

"Indeed! That is very gracious of her. I last forever; and suddenly a cloud had arisen;

the staff she leaned upon had fallen.
this she clung to now? Would it last? Would
any thing last?

What was | No more strife, love coming unsought, departing never; no more dreary lessons, no more distracted endeavors to do rightly and forever going wrong. But while thinking thus, she was already there, separated from him only by one broad reach, across which their hands failed to meet.

The twilight was dropping down, the old town growing hushed under the evening sky, the wind turning east; it was time they were at home. She called to Louis. Some one below in the street answered with a sweet old air which Cyril had once sung to her sitting under the white lilac-trees, with these words, half reproach, half consolation:

"If in any spring-sweet weather
Suddenly should come to you
Happiness and fear together,
Bid them both adieu.

"If in any garden blowing,

Summer suns should bring to you Roses, lines, for the sowing,

And perhaps a little rue;

"Will the last annul the sweetness
Of the roses rare and red?

Blind you to the white completeness
Of the lilies in their bed?

"Every day shall have its sun, love;
Every night its smiling star;
Though thick clouds obscure the one, love,
And the other smiles afar."

"How are you going to contrive, Eustacie?" he asked, reassured by her presence. "Make haste; my shoes are full of water; I shall catch my death o' cold."

She glanced down at his feet, where, true enough, the water crept ever higher and higher; it would float him off soon; she could not leave him so, yet staying did no service. A pleasure-boat skimmed past in the distance; she shrieked for help, but the wind blew her voice down her throat; she tore off her crimson scarf, and waved it for a signal, but they made no answering sign; only across the brooding expanse came a trickle of laughter, a snatch of song:

"Swiftly we glide toward the happy shore,
Feather the oar, feather the oar;
Lightly we rock on the swelling tide,
Each other beside, each other beside.
Oh, what so sweet when suns have set,
When those who long and love have met,
To fly and follow the bending shore

then take firm hold, and I will pull you across to me."

"But I'm afraid, Eustacie."

"Don't think of fear; it is necessary. Think of mamma and Juliette, and—and Cyril. Think you are doing it for them."

"And you and Mr. Trenholm?"
"Yes, dear."

The tune recalled her wandering thoughts. All this time she was forgetting Louis. He had asked her to wait while he went round the corAnd feather the oar, and feather the oar?" ner to buy a toy canoe, and he had not yet re- Oh, how could they sing, and she in mortal turned. She was growing tired of waiting, the agony? Her silken scarf was long and stout; air was chilly-it made her shiver. In raising she threw one end across the gulf to Louis. herself she chanced to look toward the shore, "Tie it round your waist, Louis," she said; where the tide was rolling in in angry undula-"tie it in that hard knot Cyril taught you; tions; then naturally her eyes found out the line of rocks along which at ebb-tide they often skipped far out on the shining flats, in search of strange shells, jelly-fishes for Louis's museum, and beautiful sea-mosses; the very rocks where she and Cyril had sat by hours sunning themselves when the treacherous tide was out, the tide which covered them at flood and left no hint. But just now there was something strange in their appearance. The water had risen about them more than half-way; but what was it disturbed the outline of the farther point? What was it that wavered and reached toward shore? At first she watched it curiously, thinking it but a sea-bird flapping its wings in defiance of the gathering gale; wondering how it must seem to be out there all alone in the growing night amidst the pitiless waters; then, presently, she shook from head to foot with vague terror; a thousand pangs thrilled along her pulses. "It is Louis!" she cried, and went bounding toward him. It was indeed Louis, who, sailing his canoe from the point, had been cut off by a strip of water too broad for his little feet to cross, too deep to ford.—how full and jocund and inviting it now apThere was no one in sight, no one but herself to hear his terrified cry.

"Well, I am ready. Oh, but the water is cold, Eustacie, and dark, so dark—if I hadn't come out here! Would you say a little prayer

first ?"

"I think I would."

"Now, Tacie-oh, quick!" But, instead of pulling him toward her, his foot caught in the crevice of a rock, and the weight of his body struggling at the end of the scarf caused Eustacie to lose her balance and plunge into the terrible crystal darkness that foamed below. The cold, cruel waters held her in a grasp of steel; shut out the tender twilight shadows dropping down upon the sea, the murmur of oar in row-lock, the echo of happy - hearted choristers. life! that had looked so barren but an hour ago

Oh,

peared, beckoning to her across a little span, with infinite possibilities folded in the long "Save me, Eustacie! Save me!" years, like the radiant, perfumed flower hidden, She looked where the slender arms were undreamed of, in the tiny seed. Was it only stretched to her appealingly-how like the through dying that she should come to know voice was to Cyril's! And what if she should its worth, its beauty, its sweetness? And this slip herself? What then? Why, after that, rest. was death? This slackening pulse, this sink

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