"'How long since you was made a trustee?' said the Squire, beginning his sentence with an untranslatable sort of grunt, and ending it in his teacup.
"'I've been your trustee ever since you was up to anything,' said his sister. 'Come, Sam,--don't you begin now! What's made you so crusty?'
"'It a'n't the worst thing to be crusty,' said the Squire. 'Shows a man's more'n half baked, anyhow.'
"'Well, what has he done?'
"'Sure enough!' said the Squire, 'what has he done? That's just what I can't find out.'
"'What do you want to find out for? What ails him?'
"'Suppose he hasn't done nothin'. Is that the sort o' man to teach litteratur in Pattaquasset?'
"'Now, Sam Deacon, what do you expect to do by all this fuss you're making?' said his sister, judicially.
"'What's the use of cross-examining a man at that rate? When I do anything, you'll know it.'"
The characters are all invested with reality by skilfully introduced anecdotes, or by personal traits carelessly and happily sketched. But it is a costly expedient to give this reality, when our authors bring in pet names, and other "love-lispings," which are sacred in privacy and painfully ridiculous when exposed to the curious light. Many of us readers find all this mawkish and silly, and others of us are pained that to such scrutiny should be exposed the dearest secrets of affection, and are not anxious to have them exposed to our own gaze. It is too trying a confidence, too high an honor, to be otherwise than unwelcome. With this criticism we close our notice of "Say and Seal," in which we have been sparing neither of praise nor blame, earnestly thanking the authors for a book that is worth finding fault with.