the promise, usually broken to the hope, that the story should be told me "one of these days." That day did not, however, in this case, prove an illusion. The story was, in due time, told to me by that dear old servant and friend, who was one of the most acute observers I ever knew. On her veracious testimony I now repeat it.

Many more complicated and startling criminal cases may be found among "les causes célèbres." This is chiefly interesting as illustrating the tendency of the indulgence of any one passion of the human mind to destroy its balance, and produce the diseases termed fixidity and monomania. These are, doubtless, actual diseases. The great truth to be learned from them is, that they might, in most instances, be avoided by moral education. The mind cannot safely dwell long and intently on one subject. The effect is precisely analogous to that produced on the physical system by bearing on one muscle-the muscle is inevitably weakened, if not destroyed.

John Dorset was a wealthy yeoman in the south-western part of Massachusetts. His was the best farm under the shadow of the Tahconnic, there where its swelling and lofty summits bound the western horizon of the pretty village of Sheffield. Dorset was a hard-working, sagacious farmer, acute, or, in rustic phrase, close at a bargain, but liberal in his ordinary transactions. "He gave freely of his bread to the poor, and his bountiful eye was blessed." He was violent in his temper and selfwilled, liable to sudden bursts of feeling, and governed by impulses. His heart was somewhat like iron, hard and resisting; but, if sufficient heat was applied, it glowed intensely, and might be worked at will. He had a fit helpmate; such as abounded in the good olden time of undisputed authority on the part of the husband and unquestioning submission on that of the wife. Dame Dorset worked diligently with wool and flax, and looked well to the ways of her household; in short, she was a wife after the old Puritan pattern. One only child had this thriving pair, to whom her father gave the name he deemed indicative of the condition. and virtues of her sex-Submit-and truly did it express the very essence of her character. She was a gentle, comely, well-nurtured lass. Her father was wont to boast of her accomplishments in such phrases as these: "Submit need not turn her back upon any gal in the New England States. She can spin on the great wheel and the little wheel-" alas! for the cheerful, domestic sounds that have passed away from the farmer's home" she can make butter and cheese equal to her mother's, roast a pig without cracking the skin, and make an Indian pudding that you can slice like wax; read, write, and cipher, as well as any woman need to, and, what is more than larning, she never disobeyed me in her life!" With such store of accomplishments, and sole apparent heir of John Dorset's wealth, no wonder that the fair Submit heard every day the preliminary

question in the rustic treaty of marriage of that good olden time, “Will you undervaly yourself so much as to overvaly me so much as to keep company with me?" But to none of the aspirants was she known to vouchsafe the propitious response, "No undervalyment at all, sir!"

Submit lost her mother; and her father, seeing his domestic affairs prosper in her hands, and loving her with all the strength of his undivided affection, was well pleased with her maidenly reserve.

"You are right, Submit," he would say, when he had seen her close the door after some suitor in holiday array; "when the right one comes will be time enough. I despise those gals that are ready to say snip to every man's snap." Poor Dorset! who shall prophesy of human wisdom? The heaviest storms are sometimes brewing when not a cloud is to be seen.

The proprietor of the farm adjoining Dorset's was a certain Rube Prime, a careless, rack-rent fellow, negligent of his own rights, and regardless of the rights of others; an unprofitable acquaintance, and a most inconvenient neighbor, annoying in every way to a man of Dorset's irritable temper and thrifty habits. Dorset's dislike of the father was extended to his brood of marauding boys, with the exception of one among them, Daniel. "He," Dorset said, "was different from the rest-" he did not mark the blush on Submit's cheek when he said so; and once when he was anathematizing the whole Prime race, he made a notable and longremembered exception in favor of Daniel. "There is not a mother's son of them worth a curse," said Dorset, in his fury; "yes, yes," he added, "I will except Daniel." Daniel was indebted for the honor of this exception to being the pet of a maiden aunt, Marah Prime, who had carefully trained him in the way in which she thought he should go-and he did go therein. "A penny saved is a penny gained," was the first lore his infant lips learned. He was taught to exchange his share of pudding and cakes with his short-sighted brothers for something that could be kept or again bartered. His thriftless father was held up before him as a beacon; and modes of practising on the old man were suggested, similar to Jacob's upon the unwary Laban; and this, he learned, "was a way to thrive." Women of all ages, conditions, and tempers, will weave a thread of love into the web of a favorite's destiny. It was when Submit was receiving her name over the baptismal font that Aunt Marah predestined her the wife of Daniel; and from that moment of sordid election, she shaped all device and action to this end.

"For once," boasted one of the young Primes, "I've made a bargain out of Dan; he's given me three fourpence ha'pennies for my string of birds' eggs!"

The birds' eggs might be seen the next day festooned round Submit's looking-glass.

"What has become of Bob?" asked all the little Primes, in a breath. and asked again without being answered. Bob was a pet squirrel, tamed by Aunt Marah, and, in due time, conveyed, by Daniel's hand, to Submit. Daniel was the only Prime permitted to enter Dorset's premises, and he was only suffered, not encouraged. He, however, in the reputed spirit of his countrymen, made the most of his opportunity by gaining the heart of the gentle heiress. We are compelled to pass in this etching style over the years that brought Daniel to man's estate. In the mean time his father died, his brothers scattered over the world, and heremained" a rolling stone gathers no moss," said Aunt Marah-he remained rooted to the farm, toiling hard to redeem it from encumbering mortgages. Now he fancied himself securely floating into the harbor so long desired, and day after day did his eye feast on Dorset's fertile fields, and night after night did he reckon up the value of the lands, tenements, stock, goods and chattels, that were to be conveyed to him by that sure and precious instrument, Submit. Aunt Marah felt his grasp socertain that she began to grumble at the liberality of Dorset's housekeeping. "But times," she trusted, "would change with masters!" Submit, and Submit alone, had secret forebodings that her father, though he tolerated Daniel, would not fancy him for a son-in-law; and, with all a woman's timid forebodings, she saw the evening approach on which, by her acquiescence, consent was to be asked. Her father had been out all day. He came home with a ruffled countenance, and she saw they had fixed on an inauspicious moment. As he threw off his coat, he grumbled, "A pretty business! A chip of the old block! I knew the devil would out, in some shape or other!" And when Submit suppressed her ominous fears, and asked, in a low voice, "What had taken place, sir?" he narrated a transaction of Daniel Prime's with a friend of his-whose simplicity Dorset had always sheltered under the wing of his superior sagacity-in which his friend had been overreached; a mode of cheating particularly odious to a man of Dorset's frank temper. "I always told you, Submit," he added, after finishing his narration, “you can't wash a checked apron white;' what's bred in the bone'--but I'll fix him, that I will." At this moment Daniel entered. Dorset did not return his deferential greeting; but Dorset often had his surly moments, and when all seemed murky, the sun shot forth from the clouds. Submit in vain tried to give her lover a warning signal. Prime's mind was intent on his purpose; and when she, hoping he might have understood her, and trusting, at any rate, that he was too discreet to unfold his purpose in her father's present humor, left the room, Daniel spoke, or tried to speak; for no sooner did Dorset comprehend his meaning, than he broke out upon him, poured forth epithets as stinging as blows, and finished by opening the doors, and actually kicking him out of the