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Rh may resume those habits which we are unable to appreciate, but which are evidently adapted to your nature. It must be hard for you, brought up in such a different manner, to accommodate yourself to those ways which come so natural to us who have never known anything else. Repining will, however, never help you; on the contrary, if you indulge in the moroseness of a disappointed spirit, you may easily lose the chance that may at some future time be offered you of escape."

"I fear," I replied, "that I may appear strangely ungrateful to you and all those who have been so kind to me, in wishing to return to that mode of life which appears to you so immeasurably inferior to this. And in spite of the permission granted by your laws, to all who are willing to leave the country should opportunity offer, might not the authorities or the people be still unwilling to allow me to quit the country that, I confess, has treated me with more kindness and consideration than I, as a stranger, had any right to expect?"

"No fear of that," she returned; "on the contrary, it is one of the first maxims of our people to grant perfect liberty to all, and above all things to place no constraint on any one whereby his happiness could be impaired. So far from meeting with opposition, I believe that every one would be only anxious to forward your views, and assist you to leave Colymbia at the very first opportunity. Of course we should regret your loss, some of us, no doubt, more than others; but what we would regret still more would be to see you detained an unwilling and an unhappy resident here, when your heart longs to be elsewhere."

I felt very much cheered by these words, and