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Partially sheltered from observation, in a recess in one of the most elegant and luxuriously furnished apartments a New England city could boast, recently enriched by some of the highest productions of literature and art that a refined taste cultured by a few years residence in Europe could select, sat a gentleman and lady engaged in earnest conversation. A brilliant assemblage bad gathered there, wealth and beauty dazzled the eye with their gorgeous splendor, and uninterrupted festivity ruled the hour. These two guests heeded not the airy formsflitting by, the voluptuous swell of the music, or the fascinating mazes of the dance. Subjects of graver and deeper importance, and of surpassing interest to them engrossed their thoughts.

It was a time when theological strife ran at its greatest height, and every man, woman and child enlisted as combatants. So perverted and distorted had become every opinion upon the subject that the individual who stood outside the conflict, in closer communion with nature's teachings than with the scholastic essays of the divines, might have been welcomed, if not as a harbinger of salvation, at least as