Let it not be objected that the doctrines of the Redeemer were more ancient than his advent and known to man before he taught them upon earth; for man having always had the same duties to fulfil in regard to his future destiny, of necessity God did not leave him in ignorance of them from the time of his origin; and when, later on, they were forgotten, and the whole world lay in darkness, then arose the Light of which a faint reflection in the firmament had long heralded the approach, though clouded most before the dawn.
MILLICENT.
I.
About two years ago we were sitting in our sunny salon in the Avenue Gabrielle, my mother and I, she reading, I at my harp, when Tomlins, our English maid, opened the door, her face all alight with suppressed laughter.
“Well, Tomlins?” said my mother.
“Please, ma’am, it were such a joke!” said Tomlins. “I was a-comin’ past the porter’s lodge when I 'eard a gentleman trying that 'ard to explain himself, and he 'adn’t 'alf a dozen words o’ French, he 'adn’t; and the concierge he could make neither 'ead nor tail of what he was wanting to say; and it was that funny I couldn’t for the life of me but burst out a-laughin’!”
“That was a shame! You should have gone to the gentleman’s assistance, instead of laughing at him,” said my mother reprovingly; “he would have done so had he seen you in a difficulty.”
“I think he was Hamerican, ma’am,” said Tomlins, in a tone which clearly indicated that she thought this fact an extenuating circumstance of her misbehavior.
“That makes no difference,” said my mother; “you know enough of French, such as it is, to have been useful to him, and you should have come forward. But how do you know he was an American?”
“He wore a white 'at, ma’am, and that’s what Henglish gentlemen don’t use to, leastways not this time of year. He be the family that has took the flat down-stairs for the winter.”