"You may think it nonsense," I answered, with the quiet fervor of conviction, "but I am sure it is nothing but the real state of the case."
"Bosh!" exclaimed Perry, throwing his boots into a corner; and therewith the discussion closed.
About a week ago I had a letter from him, though, in which he recalled this circumstance and acknowledged that I had been in the right. "They are going to be married in the fall," he wrote. "I hope they may be happy, and I suppose they will be; but I don't think Mrs. Herbert ought to marry him unless she loves him; and I am fearful that she only thinks to reward long years of faithful affection. George deserves more than that." This was a good deal for Perry to manage to say. He usually keeps as far away from such subjects as he well can,—which is partly the reason, I think, that his opinion thereon is not greatly to be trusted. As for me, I am sure George's wife will love him as much as he deserves,—though this is almost an infinite amount,—and that she has not been far from loving him from the beginning. I have bought a pair of vases to send them; and I expect that Miss Lucretia Knowles will say, when she learns how much they cost, that I was very extravagant. Not that Lu is close or stingy at all; but she has promised to wait until I have made a start in life, and is naturally impatient for me to get on as rapidly as possible.
FRANK PARKE.
THE WOOD-THRUSH AT SUNSET.
Lover of solitude,
Poet and priest of nature's mysteries,
If but a step intrude,
Thy oracle is mute, thy music dies.
Oft have I lightly wooed