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266 ing. "Don't you think he must have taken it out in a long course of easy chairs afterwards?"

"I don't fancy they had any worth mentioning in those days. What hardy old people they were, and to what an age they lived! Now-a-days it is the old who bury the young. I think it was their leisurely way of taking things, their conversations, their journeys, their love-makings, that kept their bodies and souls so fresh. They were content to take life gradually: one emotion at a time was enough for them; they knew how to wait. Our generation is not satisfied with looking forward; it must desire, long for, possess, all in a breath. There is very little patience anywhere in this nineteenth century."

"I should have liked to live in those days," I say, thinking; "they lived much grander, sweeter, honester lives than we do; they must have had so much more of eternity, so much less of the present, in their thoughts than we have!"

"Let me tell you, Nell," says Paul, "that there are girls in the world every bit as nice and honest and sweet as their grand-mothers were. Do you remember," he asks, drawing nearer to me, "that once, years ago, I assured you it was much better to be good than pretty? And you disappointed me a good deal, by seeming to prefer the prettiness to the goodness!"

"It was not for beauty's sake I wished it," I say, looking ashamed; "but because I had always thought it a great power, and because I saw handsome people treated far more kindly than plain ones!"

"Do you not know, Nell, that far more deeply rooted in a man's breast than the mere admiration of physical beauty is his veneration of what is pure, and not to be corrupted, something better than himself, in a word—good? Many women believe that they can hold an undivided empire over a lover's heart by being simply lovely to the eye, and charming; they trust to the come-