on his ideas of personal dignity. Yet, with strange inconsistency, it was her very indulgence of these peculiarities that inclined him most strongly to Constance Glen, and finally, I am well convinced, determined him on making her his wife, as one well suited to secure the welfare of his turbulent and incomprehensible child, his "rebellious Miriam," as he sometimes called me when milder words availed not.

He had, as I have said, an "English" horror of scenes and excitement of any kind. He was conservative in every way. He believed in the British classics, and would not admit that any thing could ever equal, far less surpass them (dreary bores that many of them are to me!). Walter Scott's novels were the only ones of later days he ever allowed himself to read approvingly; for, once being beguiled, against his will almost, into sitting up late at night to finish a new work called "Pelham," he frowned down all allusion to the book or its author ever afterward, as derogatory to his dignity.

"Bulwer and Disraeli are literary coxcombs," he said, "who ought not to be encouraged, and who are trying to undermine wholesome English literature."

"O father," I ventured to observe on one occasion, "'Vivian Grey' is splendid. It is a delightful dream, more vivid than life itself; it is like drinking champagne, smelling tuberoses, inhaling laughing-gas, going to the opera, all at one time, and, if you once take it in your hand, nothing short of a stroke of lightning could rend it away, I am convinced. Do read it, sir, to please me, and retract your denunciation."

"Never," he said firmly, solemnly even, "and I counsel you, Miriam, in turn, to seek your draughts of soul from our pure 'wells of English undefiled,' rather than such high-flown fancies and maudlin streams as flow from the pen of this accomplished Hebrew. There is a little too much of the Jeremiah and Isaiah style about such extracts as I have seen, to suit my taste."

"The idea of a Jew writing novels!" said Evelyn, derisively as she sipped her wine.

"Or the grandest poem in the world!" added Mr. Bainrothe, who was dining with us that day, coming to the rescue quite magnanimously as it seemed, and for once receiving as his recompense a grateful look from the stray lamb of the tribe of Judah, reposing quietly in a Christian fold.

"What poem do you allude to?" said Evelyn, superciliously. "'Paradise Lost?'—Oh, I thought Milton was a Unitarian, not quite a Jew; almost as bad though!"

"No, the book of Job," replied Mr. Bainrothe. "It was that I alluded to."

"And the Psalms," I added, breathlessly.

"Dear me," said Evelyn, "what an array of learning we have all at once! Why, every Sunday-school child knows about the Psalms. David and Solomon did nothing else but sing and dance, I believe."

"Irreverent, very, Evelyn," said my father, looking at her a little severely, in spite of his own "Jeremiah" and "Isaiah" allusions. I had never heard him check her so openly before, and enjoyed it thoroughly. My smile of approbation provoked her, I suppose, for she pursued:

"I am so tired of having the Bible thrown at my head; you must excuse me, papa. For my part, I find the New Testament all-sufficient. I weary of the horrors of those Jews; worse than our Choctaw Indians, I verily believe."

"So they were, so they were, my dear," said my father, complacently, "but for some reasons we must always treat their memory with a certain respect. They were God's people, remember, in the absence of a better, and their history is written in this book, which we must all revere."

"A very great people, surely," said Mr. Bainrothe, "and destined to be so again. Don't you think so, Miriam?"

"I don't know," I said; "I have never thought of such a possibility before, I acknowledge, yet it is natural I should incline to my mother's people, and I can say heartily, I hope so, Mr. Bainrothe."

"Then you want to see the Christian religion trampled under foot," said Evelyn, spitefully, fixing her eyes on mine.

The blood rose hotly to my temples. "No, no, indeed! You know I do not, Evelyn, for it is mine; but Christ died for all, Jew as well as Gentile. Through him let us hope for change and mercy and peace on earth. When infinite harmony prevails, the Hebrew race will find its appointed place and level again, through one great principle."

"My idea is, that it has found its appointed place and level, and will abide there.—But to digress, when do you expect your son, Mr. Bainrothe?"

I have anticipated by many years in giving this snatch of conversation here. Let us go back to the time of my father's marriage, and to affairs as they stood then, for precious are the unities.

I need not drop Mr. Bainrothe, however, and it was of him, our left-hand neighbor, so intimately connected with our destiny, one and all, that I was about to speak when the digression occurred which led me from the high-road of my story.

Our "sinister neighbor," as my father laughingly called him sometimes with unconscious truth, in reference to his left-hand adjacency, was a handsome and gentlemanly-looking man of no very particular age, or rather in his appearance there was no criterion for decision on this subject. His form was as slender and elastic, his step as light, his teeth, hair, and complexion, as unexceptionable as though he had been twenty-five; nor were there any of those signs and symptoms about him by which the weather-wise usually measure experience and length of days.

If care had come nigh him at all, it had swept as lightly past him as time itself. His address was invariably urbane, self-possessed, well-bred; his voice was pleasant, his smile rather brilliant, though it never reached his eyes, except when he sneered, which was rarely and terribly.

They glittered then with a strange cold light, those variegated orbs, but their ordinary expression was earnest and investigatory. They were well-cut eyes, moreover, of a yellowish-brown color, and I used to remark as a little child—for children observe the minutiae of personal peculiarities much more closely than their elders—that the iris of both orbs was speckled with green and golden spots, which seemed to mix and dilate occasionally, and gave them a decidedly kaleidoscopic effect.

His skin was clear and even florid, and his lips had the peculiarity of turning suddenly white, or rather livid, without any evident cause. This my father thought betokened disease of the heart, but I learned later to know it was the only manifestation of suppressed feeling which the habit of his life could not overcome, and that proved him still mortal and fallible.

He had bought and moved into the house he occupied, in his single estate, with a few efficient servants, soon after my father had taken possession of his own larger mansion, and it was not long before the best understanding existed between these two. My father's hauteur was no safeguard against the steady and self-poised approaches—his shyness found relief in the calm self-reliance of his "left-hand" neighbor; and, as they were both lovers of books, rather than students thereof, a congeniality of tastes on literary subjects drew them together in those hours of leisure which Mr. Bainrothe usually passed in his own or my father's library, in the cultivation of the dolce far niente—I beg pardon—his mind.

What his occupation was, if indeed he had any worthy of a definite name, I never knew. That he was a kind of intermediate agent or broker I have since suspected. His leisure seemed infinite. He came and went to and from the business part of the city several times a day, and often in the elegant barouche he kept, with its span of highly-groomed horses and respectable-looking negro driver in simple livery—an old retainer of his house, as he informed my father, faithful still, though freed in the time of universal emancipation.

His association was undoubtedly, to some extent, with the best men of the town—bankers and merchants chiefly;