going to do anything in the world to get beforehand, you know it is time for you to set about it.' And then she'd take her knitting and go off to spend the afternoon with aunt Sally, and they would talk me all over, and both sigh and groan over Frank, and shake their wise heads, and wish he might do well, but if he had only taken some regular business, or even learned a good trade, he might save up a little and settle down in life, Settle down in life! Isn't that a phrase ! 'Settle down! I don't want to settle down,' I used to say, I want to rise higher,' and when the first picture was done, and well done, the first hand to grasp my own with cordial cheer was a stranger's; while Aunt Prudence still said, Well now, Frank, think of all it's cost you! How much time you've taken, and how little bread and butter it has brought you. You might have had a few acres all cleared by this time, and a snug house and a barn on it, and a cow and a pig of your own.'

"But that picture. I couldn't tell her how it cleared away acres of obstacles on my onward path, how the troublesome brushwood, hitherto mountain high around me, burned up and vanished away, and an inward voice, stronger than all Miss Prudence's loudest repetition of A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,'-louder than all her pitiful 'Mercies' urged me on, and my heart said, 'This is the way, walk ye in it.' I never shall forget Prudence's last advice to me when I left home to come to the city. 'Well,' said she, Frank, you are sure of a good living on the farm, you'd better let well enough alone." ́ O, said I, ‘Aunt Prudence,

The better never should grow weary,
But always think of better and fulfill it.'

High, inaccessible, let all my life

Be a continual aiming at that mark.'

'Frank,' said she, looking over spectacles and shaking her head, you'll find, after fiddling away your time awhile, that this poetry, like love, is all fol de-rol.'

"But," said Carleyn, "I have been successful beyond my highest expectations. Orders have come to me from all quarters. But if you'll come in to-morrow, I'll show you my tiger-a Tiger in a Trap.'"

What a jubilee there would be if all the fault-finders could be banished for one year! What bounding hearts

and beating pulses! What elastic steps-what sunshiny homes-what active Bridgets! How the doctor's shadow on the hearthstone would grow small by degrees, and the nurse's attentions beautifully less. What a fall there would be in the price of pills and powders, blisters and plasters! Wouldn't the little folks have a grand time for once-talk and laugh as loud as they want, without being interrupted, at each new burst of fun, with "Johnny, I'm surprised!" Wouldn't they play stage-coach and rail-road with the chairs, build houses with old books, hunt up unmolested all the old strings to play horse with? Wouldn't they laugh right out, even at the table, if they felt very funny? And if any great pleasure excited them, wouldn't they hop around enthusiastically, and tell about it, without anybody's ́exclaiming, "Don't holler so, Johnny-we are not all deaf!" and have always to be told "that little children should be seen and not heard." These little boys are kicked and cuffed around because they are only boys, and if they stand still to see what is going on, they are told they are always getting in the way.

Trouble kills, yes it kills, it stabs, it pierces! Many mortal headaches are brought on by finding fault-many a disease, baffling the doctor's skill, many a valuable life ended, many a heart broken, many a widow shrouded in weeds, many an orphan wandering motherless, through finding fault. Yet who ever heard of its doing anybody any good? Who knows how full of sorrow the heart already is? Who knows if their finding fault may not add the overflow. ing drop?

Hath ever human chronicle recorded one consumptive cured, one headache soothed, heart healed, hope brightened, life lengthened, or criminal reformed, by finding fault?

'Tis poison, sure and slow, administered in homeopathic doses, hour by hour, to suffering, jaded humanity, the effect stealing like small doses of arsenic in the framework of the heart, and making life intolerable.

Many a person can do nothing but find fault. It is a habit-a -a passion; but when the last mortal lips are sealed, the last mortal eyes closed, the last heart stilled, may those divine lips say to many a scolded, stricken, yet redeemed spirit, "Neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more."

How can we kneel at the eternal throne, and ask forgive

ness for our ceaseless sinning, if we cannot utter, from humble hearts, that most beautiful of all petitions, "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." While we harshly chide another for little faults, can we not read this startling thesis on the door of conscience, "For if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses."

CHAPTER XXII.

NEPENTHE ON EXHIBITION.

"Oh la belle, la noble destinee d'avancer toujours vers la perfection, sans rencontrer jamais le terme de ses progres."-ANCILLON.

EVERYBODY went to the Academy of Design that year, and so of course Miss Charity Gouge went. She was growing very near-sighted. She was armed with eye glass, bouquet and curls, and looked as well as she could in her youthful pink hat and stylish velvet mantilla. She always wore white kids, and if possible a green dress. She had a green moire antique, a green brocade, a green cashmere robed, everything was green to suit her taste.

Mr. Vole said, "Charity always looked green. Everybody knew you couldn't see much of charity out in the world, so it couldn't be used to the ways of society."

Mr. Vole was always punning-he couldn't help it. Many of his puns were very good and bright. Nobody who knew him could help liking him. Nobody ever got angry with him.

Miss Charity, Miss Kate Howard, and Mrs. Edwards were standing before one picture.

Since Selwyn's visit to the studio, Carleyn had painted another ideal, more beautiful than Dawn. No description of ours can do it justice. One must stand before it to feel the magic of its beauty, and breathe the spell of its loveliness. It was the gem of the Academy, and everybody stopped before it, as if enchanted. The picture was in the first gallery, and was marked "Nepenthe, No. 126. F. E. Carleyn, A."

It was the graceful figure of a maiden. All but the face

seemed shrouded in a misty veil. The tearless eyes looked forward as if in eager expectation into the clear blue sky, mantling with the first blush of sunrise. In her right hand she held a goblet, sparkling with diamonds. A radiant aureola crowns the brow of the maiden, while around the brim of the goblet play wreathing circles of dazzling light. The robe is girded by a rainbow, and a rainbow spans the aureola over her head. She stands on the shore of a raging sea, yet the turf beneath her feet is sown with emeralds and enamelled with hearts' ease, and before her rests in innocence a snowy dove; behind her, are mountains of angry clouds, which her left hand, slight and delicate as it seems, presses back; beneath the clouds rolls and rages a stormy sea, dashing its angry waves against the trail of her robe, whose folds in front are bordered with amaranthine light. She seems forgetful of the angry clouds and raging sea, as she gazes intently into the sunlight beyond, while from the ruby scroll around the goblet, flash in crimson and carmine glory the letters of the magic word, "Nepenthe."

You couldn't catch Miss Gouge in any ignorance. If she didn't know what a thing meant, she would put on a wise face, and keep very silent, and go home and look in the Dictionary, or find out in some other sly way. She never would ask any one to enlighten her ignorance. But Kate Howard stood looking at the picture, and at the name on the scroll, with a puzzled expression in her face, as if she knew, and yet she didn't know what was the real design of the artist. Mr. Vole came up and stood before the picture, and she turned and said,

"Mr. Vole, who is Nepenthe? Was there ever such a person? The picture is all sunshine and beauty before, and shadow and storm behind. It means something-I'm sure I don't know, I'm such a little dunce."

"Nepenthe is a remarkable and expressive word-most comprehensive, most significant," said Mr. Vole, standing as erect as possible, straightening his collar, adjusting his cravat, and clearing his throat, and imitating exactly Doctor Bachune's wise manner and labored enunciation. "Nepenthe is a Greek word, or rather a compound of two Greek words, ne, not, and penthos, grief. There is a kind of magic potion, mentioned by Greek and Roman poets, which was supposed to make persons forget their sorrows and misfor

tunes. We moderns," he added, with another throat-clearing, "we moderns use it figuratively, to express a remedy."

"A second Daniel, a second Daniel," said Kate, laughing, "much obliged to you, doctor, you have very lucidly enlightened the fathomless profundity of my incomparably opaque ignorance. I was partially aware that it was something resembling forgetfulness, but I cherished only an adumbrant idea of the real intent of the meaning of the artist's design, in the uniquely original and mysteriously marvellous conception. How much more significant the word Nepenthe than Lethe

By whose bright water's magic stream,
I oft would rest and gladly dream,
That blest oblivion's pall were cast,
O'er all my sad and troubled past.

But I'd rather have one quaff of this Nepenthe, than the whole river of Lethe. I could drink Nepenthe and count over my old joys. Very few of us would like to forget all the past.

For while our thoughts we backward cast,
We'd grateful be for joy-gemmed past.

Kate knew Mr. Vole never puzzled his head much about the Greek of a thing, and she guessed he'd been asking somebody some questions; but assuming his natural tone again he said, "The picture is really full of meaning; that goblet containing the Nepenthe is made of diamonds, and scrolled with ruby, because these are the most precious of stones, and Nepenthe would be the most valued of potions could we obtain it. The most highly prized varieties of ruby are the crimson and carmine, so you notice these shades in the scroll. The figure stands on the turf enamelled with heart's ease, and the dove is in front, to show that when sorrows and sins are forgotten, our souls might rest in heart's ease and innocence, while our life would be girdled and spanned over by the rainbow promise, that sorrow should overwhelm us no more, and with tearless eyes as we hold this precious cup we could ever be looking out for the sunrise of dawning hopes and the culminating of rising joy, while as with the touch of a light hand we could press behind us billows and clouds."

"I wish, Miss Kate," said Mr. Vole, sadly,

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