own room in a state of work which precluded all all ordinary speech; if he spoke to Lil it would only be to call to her to find him a book or a reference. He did this once or twice, and it was a great relief to her to turn her mind perforce from her perplexities. She must write to-day. She knew something of what Charlie Newman was enduring. But she was so incapable of decision-and as things were she did not see a chance of a real talk with her father. Of course she could easily speak for a little while to him; of course he would say, "Do you care for him, little girl? Write and tell him to come down." not what she wanted. to say-oh, ever so many thingsto talk her heart out, as it were.

That was She wanted

She determined to get her father alone in the afternoon, when he took his fresh air before dinner. That would be early enough for her to send a letter by the afternoon post.

So she sat down again to read to Gran.

In the afternoon Lady Lynne called, and seeing poor Lil's weary face, thought she was being bored by her Gran. So, like a good Samaritan, she stayed and talked merrily, with her dexterous skill, making Gran laugh; even Lil

smiled. But her heart sank when she heard her father's whistle for the dogs, and then the slam of the gate. He had gone for a long walk by himself. Why had she not thought of that! He never did it except when Gran was with them, but sometimes he went out alone then.

He would not return till the post had long gone.

She must decide for herself now. Lady Lynne thought Lil appeared like a sort of uneasy ghost. She sat on her chair, pale, with a fixed smile, and every now and then

made a movement which had no result. She was trying to make up her mind to go quietly and write a refusal to Charlie Newman, and then she would walk down the road with Lady Lynne and post it. But she could not make up her mind.

Post time came and went. No letter was written.

"This is dreadful!" said Lil to herself, sticking some flowers into her hair, for dinner, so badly that they all fell out again.

That evening nothing could be done with her. She lay like a log on a sofa, thinking of nothing but of the fog of indecision she was in. Gran sat knitting, and looking every now and then at this picture of unconscious beauty on the sofa, and made up her mind that Lil had done something very wrong.

She yearned over the child, for she believed that unless she herself effected her salvation no one else would; and then the end of that joyous life would be hell-fire for ever. Brough she regarded as lost, although she still made an occasional attempt to redeem him; and it is small wonder that her very fun was gloomy when she regarded the best part of the human race as lost, and believed with absolute sincerity and the vividness of imaginative anticipation that these two beings so dear to her were destined to be burned everlastingly.

As she believed in the innate depravity of the human soul, she naturally concluded, seeing Lil in so strange a mood, that she had done something very naughty. So she began to talk to her very earnestly, quoting the Old Testament with a fluency which showed that she was a thorough student of it.

Lil said nothing. The future tortures of hell had small dread for her, with her poor little heart in a

kind of Hades of uncertainty. She listened, lying still upon her sofa, until it was time to go to bed.

Brough always deserted the drawing-room about nine o'clock, and worked in his own den until the small hours of the morning. He was just achieving a great reputation, and none who have not done this, or endeavoured to do it, can guess at the herculean labours which it involves. The unimaginative aphorism that genius is only untiring industry is that most false thing, a half truth. Genius is wasted, as far as the world is concerned, without untiring industry. It must include it, for the world requires a persistent hammering at before it can appreciate. The public, with regard to genius, is much like a Scotchman with regard to a joke-make a good big hole in its head, and you may be able to make it appreciate your point. No man who really loves his bed, his pipe, society, or solitude, better than work, will make his mark upon the hard head of the public.

Brough knew this, and shut himself away from temptation for the greater part of the twenty-four hours. Not even Lil penetrated his solitude when he worked at night.

Consequently he was a good deal surprised at about twelve o'clock on this particular night to be aroused from his abstraction by the appearance of a kind of pink and white ghost on the other side of his writing-table. He stared in some astonishment for a second; but at the end of the second discovered that the ghost was Lil in her dressing-gown.

Gran had been asleep for a couple of hours. Lil knew by experience that the faintest sound would wake her; but, having tossed herself about until her small brain began to reel, she put on her pink dressing-gown and risked the possible

disturbing of Gran's rest by opening the door.

And now she stood, with pale cheeks, and very wide-open eyes, before Brough's writing-table.

66

Why, Baby, what is it?" he asked, much amazed.

She came round, and, standing beside him, gave him the letter in which Charlie Newman had, as he said, laid his soul bare.

She looked at her father's face, which grew nervous, and worked a little as he read it. Twice he read it through; then he looked at the date, and put it down.

"Well, what have you said ?"

The question was put with an easy cheerfulness, as if it were certain to be right whichever way she answered. He always assumed that tone with her, for he had been forced into bitter rebellion against authority in his own youth, and he would rather Lil looked on him as brother than as father. The result was, as might be expected-he was both to her.

She looked up piteously now as he asked her this question.

"I haven't said anything." "You haven't answered this letter yet ?"

"No," said Lil, feeling a little guilty at the quick tone in which the second question was asked.

"You have left that unanswered? -that's too bad, Lil; he'll think you a little flirt."

This was said so gravely that Lil felt entirely crushed, and made no answer. Her father took up the letter and read it again. Then he took out his pockethandkerchief and pretended to have a cold.

"I say, I'm sorry for that fellow, Lil-he's confoundedly in earnest. I did not give him credit for being so much in earnest. He must have felt bad all to-day. Lil, you must go before breakfast to-morrow and telegraph to him."

"Do what, papa ?" exclaimed

Telegraph to him," repeated Brough Warrington, with decision. "One way or the other-whatever the answer is to be-he must have it to-morrow morning; and which is it to be ?"

"That's just what I don't know," said Lil, with pathetic helplessness. Brough lay back in his chair and laughed.

Well, you are a little muff," he said, "not to know your own mind."

"It's very nice to laugh, I dare say," said Lil, with a very feeble effort at her dignified manner; " but what am I to do? You don't like him. I have heard you call him a prig and goody-goody. I don't believe you will like me to marry him, and I don't want to marry him at all; for I don't think I like him myself. The only difficulty is that I can't refuse him."

Brough laughed again a little. "Baby, you are a delicious small monkey," he said; "do you really mean all you say?"

"I do, indeed."

Charlie Newman went home to his rooms in the middle of the day, professedly for lunch. If he could but have seen Lil, then !— sitting at the lunch table, a red spot on each cheek, too excited and too alarmed at what she had done that morning, to eat a morsel of food!

He went home, pronouncing himself emphatically a fool, a silly fool, to still hope. And yet he eyed the servant that opened the door hungrily was there a letter for him? The landlady, who was on the stairs called to him.

"There is a telegram for you, sir," she said, "it's on your table upstairs, and I opened it, thinking to send it on to you if it was important; but it didn't seem to be important, sir, so I left it."

He ran upstairs-that could be nothing. He took the envelope and opened it without interest.

grand

As an

original thinker and a rare conversationalist, she held her place amid a collection of men who mark a pure and beautiful phase of American literature. author, her position is well known; but Margaret, powerful and beautiful as is a large portion of her written work, as a writer is evidently but a fraction of herself. An American Universalist minister, whom we have met, who in his earlier days attended some of her classes for young men, has often said, when asked to give some idea of her, that it was of little use attempting to describe the subtle qualities which made up her personality. Her sway over those who loved her was partly that of keen intellectual power; but it also very greatly arose from a strong magnetic influence and a nature which glowed and burned with love.

From childhood she showed a marked character. Her intellect was extraordinarily developed while she was still very young. A "joyful child, with light flowing locks and bright face," she had but little joyfulness in her life, save in her books. Her mother was delicate and burdened by younger children. This elder

was

child found her place in her father's study, where she taught English and Latin grammar simultaneously, and began to read Latin at six years old.

Margaret left among her papers some introductory chapters to an unfinished autobiographic romance; and these papers are used by her biographers as an account of her own childhood. Her brother, in a preface to a volume in which this appears, considers the picture of their father is too stern, and therefore, it is to be supposed, not intended for an absolute life study. But as he leaves the pages in question without further remark, and supplies no other particulars of his sister's early youth, we are left to accept Margaret's own account. She was the eldest child of Timothy Fuller and Margaret Crane. Mr. Fuller "had great distinction at the Bar and a large professional practice. practice. He was untiring in his industry, grudged the hours nature demands for sleep, was a fine classic scholar, and an extensive reader." Her mother, Margaret Crane, seemed to have been of so sweet and joyous a character as to call forth the highest descriptive faculties of her children and friends in their endeavour to leave some record of it. A few sentences of Margaret's in these chapters of autobiography give an idea of her mother which is more distinct than that imparted by longer descriptions. 'My father's love for her," she 66 says, was the green spot on which he stood apart from the commonplaces of a mere bread-winning, bread-bestowing ex

istence. She was one of those fair and flower-like natures which sometimes spring up even beside the most dusty highways of life-a creature not to be shaped into a merely useful instrument, but bound by one law with the blue sky, the dew, and the frolic birds. Of all persons whom I have known she had in her most of the angelic -of that spontaneous love for every living thing-for man, and beast, and tree, which restores the golden age." She was as full, says her son Richard Fuller, of the elasticity of life, and her heart as overflowing with the music of nature, as the early songsters of the spring.

Her fondness for flowers was almost a passion, and her son gives a charming picture of her working at her flower bed. She would stoop over it and toil upon it through long sunny hours. unwearied labours in the heat attracted the admiration even of the hardy farmers. "Her expression," he goes on to say "as she knelt by the flower bed and bent her near-sighted gaze close to a plant, and discovering some new unfolding promise of beauty, turned round to announce it with a childlike simplicity and a delighted smile, I think can never fade from the memories of her children."

But Margaret, though gladdened by this gentle mother's influence, was subject intellectually to a stern guidance. Although she is considered to have exaggerated, for some purpose or other, the over-tasking of her brain in childhood, yet it is very plain that the work she accomplished was severe, and that she received an education such as is seldom obtained except at an English public school, and perhaps not often there. Her naturally powerful mind was fostered under conditions which are granted to a woman perhaps once

or twice in a hundred years. That the pressure was so high that, though the pleasure was intense to the child, it left a memory of pain in after years, is evident. Such high pressure would be considered by most parents as unnecessary and even wrong for a girl; yet when we see a Margaret Fuller emerge from it, it is difficult to believe that it need be harmful. Even if much of the public school education is useless, and the classics are forgotten except by a proportion, yet the hard work produces a certain vigour and toughness of brain and gives a capacity for application. Even though the growing tendency towards the education of Englishwomen should not produce many Margaret Fullers in our midst, yet it must tend to remove the curse of frivolity from the sex by training the powers of application.

Yet

That Margaret's world of enjoyment was wide and glorious, although she speaks of her childhood as unhappy and unnatural, is revealed in her language when she turns to the authors she read and the dreams she indulged in. it is possible that she suffered more than many less intelligent children might have done under the severe educational system put upon her, because, although she was full of vivid intellectual life, the love within her was a real stirring of the spirit.

She has been often regarded as especially intellectual; but it seems possible to claim for her that she was, instead of that, especially loving. This may seem strange when her intellectual power and weight are considered; but she is remarkable not by force of intellect at the cost of other faculties, but by an intensity of her whole being which made her not only more intelligent and thoughtful than others, but also more loving. Shakespeare first caught hold of