fashionable life, but still in the flush of a triumphant career, becomes infatuated with a thoroughly intellectual youth or young man whose feelings are fresh and who is virtuous-infatuated to the exclusion of almost every other thought or emotion. Augusta Delaine believed that her secret was safe, even from Pulsifer. He was quite willing she should think so. He looked on quietly, betraying no intelligence on the subject. "Let the young fellow find it out himself. It won't hurt him any. And it won't do any harm to let Clara Digby know what other women think of him." The lawyer could not quite give up his shrewd, worldly-wise cogitations! [END OF PART FIRST.] A PARISIAN FORTUNE-TELLER. It is a source of very little pleasure, I should suppose, to a traveller to spend all his time in whatever strange cities he may enter, viewing only the public sights. Now, wherever I have gone, it has always been a point with me to neglect, in a great measure, those spots of historical or local interest mentioned in the guide-books, and to seek out all the odd places of which my companions knew nothing. Thus, if I should go to Pisa, I might be able to tell you all about the rag-pickers or thieves there supposing those characters to exist and not one syllable about the Leaning Tower. It is not for me to say, whether this sort of travel is advantageous in the long run; but, considering the rather large number of works on the subject of voyaging published every ten years or so, I am surprised that every man does not know foreign cities as well as he does the city in which he lives, although he may have never stirred from his own fireside. Being in Paris at the time of the last Exposition, and being, after a day or so, rather bored with the "chief points of attraction," I cast about me to find what I may call the "chief points of repulsion." That is to say, those places where not many went. I glanced over a newspaper in the hope of finding casual mention of one of these, when my eye fell upon the advertisement of Monsieur Souvestre, "Reader of Destiny." Here, thought I, is to be found entertainment for the day! I will make myself acquainted with this gentleman, who is, no doubt, quite extraordinary in his way, take a look into the future, and leave Paris to-morrow delighted! I set off immediately to obtain audience with M. Souvestre. His name was quite an assurance of character, because it permitted me to believe, if I chose, that he was perhaps a brother, or some other near relative of the author of the "Attic Philosopher." And the thought, that he boldly set himself up in the face of all Paris (which was at that time in the face of all the world) to predict the future, was sufficient to prove some capacity for such a surprising undertaking. He did not in the least fear being unequal to his professions, because he asked skeptics in the paper, as a particular favor, to visit him and make any experiment they chose; and declared warmly, in capitals, that he was prepared to satisfy any Thomas who would not believe without first plainly seeing. I found M. Souvestre, as became a man of such uncommon gifts, modestly residing in a very retired quarter, and without the smallest mark outside his door of his profession. Upon presenting myself, I was ushered into a pretty little ante-chamber by a neat servant, whose only cabalistic appendages were a couple of small truncheons, with which, I afterwards suspected, he made the somewhat unmelodious drumming on a chair in the passage, where he was perpetually stationed. I found two other persons-Venetian sailors in the apartment to which I had been directed, who had, like myself, come to find out what their joys and woes were to be in the coming years; and, being on all sides well acquainted with the language of looks and gestures, we at once entered into a very engrossing conversation. I must admit that I did not have any peculiar feelings in the Seer's room-ofwaiting. On the contrary, it seemed very much as if I had gone to the dentist's, and was half-impatiently seeking my turn to have my tooth drawn. After some time, a head was thrust from behind the folding-doors, and a voice cried, "Next!" and the sailors being next, both went in together. I shall not be in a hurry to forget the trepidation with which these fellows, who no doubt have slept many a time near the topmast, if such a thing is possible, or taken a comfortable meal on the remotest end of the bowsprit, entered the mystic apartment to which they had been summoned. At first, I thought they would give up the idea altogether. They struggled so long. as to who should have precedence, as you may have seen children do on going into the dark, that I was just preparing to relieve them by offering to take their place, when they managed it by both marching in abreast. Their departure made the room very desolate; after a space, and, in sheer desperation, I fell to counting the chairs, the flowers in the carpet, the stains on the wall, and every thing capable of being counted within eyeshot. This exercise nearly blinded me, and was making my head so dizzy, that I seemed to be in the cabin of a deserted ship, with all the world drifting by, when the head again appeared, and the voice again said, “Next! I looked at my watch. The sailors had been disposed of in an hour. I opened the folding-doors, and entered. The room contained three chairs, an open secretary, on which there were lying papers and books, and a very peculiar object, which stood directly in the middle of the floor. It was a large crystal globe, made to revolve on the same principle as those globes used in our school-days, and divided into three separate compartments. Each of these was half-filled with some colorless liquid like water. I instantly thought of the famous Dr. Dee, and turned to look at his prototype of to-day. M. Souvestre was a dark man of fifty, at least. He really appeared to be any thing but a Frenchman, having all the signs about him of German origin; but his accent and manner contradicted every other token, and assured me that he could have never lived a year out of Paris in the whole course of his life. He bowed with much elegance, and, concluding as a matter of course, that I could have no business with him outside of his profession, asked me to extend him my arm. This I did with some misgivings, when he immediately rolled up my sleeves, and fell to seeking a particular vein. "You are going to bleed me?" I asked. "Certainly, Monsieur," he answered with a shrug. "How can that have any thing to do with finding out my destiny?" He smiled with much naivete and self-confidence, and only said, "You shall see!" Having found the vein, he deftly punctured it with his lancet and extracted about a thimble-full of blood. This he caught in the tiniest decanter imaginable and immediately stopped any further flow. I watched him, as may be supposed, with a great deal of interest. He went to the crystal globe and drew the stoppers from the three orifices, one to every compartment, which I now discovered in it, and proceeded to pour an equal quantity of the blood into each. Immediately the liquid, whatever it may have been, congealed the new infusion and caused it to assume a thousand fantastic shapes. "In this place," said M. Souvestre, alluding to the chamber on his right hand, "I find your past. In this in the middle I find your Present. In this to the left I find your Future." Some astonishment at the result of the recent operations caused me to make an exclamation. It was immediately followed by a command. "Read!" said I with a gesture of authority. "You were born across the great ocean. You are an American, and belong to one of the Southern States. You have lived nearly twenty-three years. You occupy yourself to keep from doing nothing, a privilege to which your future entitles you, with an instrument which you hold in your hand. It must be one of two things a shoemaker's awl or a pen;-and I see by your fingers that it is not the former. You are engaged when at home among numerous others, over most of whom you seem to exercise authority. I should say you are an editor." It is not necessary to tell any more of what the Professor said on this score, since it would be merely giving my own private history, a narrative about which no person can be suspected of feeling any interest just at present, and I will proceed without going so much into detail. M. Souvestre made his professions good, I must candidly acknowledge. He told me-in the same vague way shown above-numberless facts about my past life, of which I am certain he could have obtained no inkling outside the crystal globe. The members of my family, dead and alive, were accurately described-my business transactions thoroughly sifted and, in short, my amazement at the Frenchman's gifts was being rapidly succeeded by wholesome fears lest he should be equally fortunate in reading my future-in which there would necessarily be some bad as well as good luck—and I much preferred to letting the latter come without casting any shadow before. When he had got through with the Past, M. Souvestre asked me radiantly how I was pleased. "Very much, I assure you. But how is it done? Upon my word, it puzzles me fearfully." "Doubtless! But I have not yet proved myself. I will show to you that I can do more than your spiritualistsyour clairvoyants. How I obtain my power is, Monsieur, another matter. Attend!" He then began to speak of the present. With the greatest ease and in the best spirits he read off my plans as I had laid them only a few days before, my expectations from projects already placed in train, and my mingled hopes and fears about matters as yet hardly well conceived. In several particulars he was quite in error; but on the whole, his utterances were marvellously correct. His earnestness and self-satisfaction caused me to wonder the more, and I believe, half his success in making me look on the business with quite a feeling of awe and, to speak after the ordinary fashion, reverence, was due to the fact that he manifestly believed thoroughly in himself. If he had been reading anybody's affairs but my own, I should have laughed to see him crawling about his globe, on his hands and knees, peering with such an earnest face into the intri.cacies of the congealed blood, and then looking up into my eyes so seriously, and revealing almost every secret I had in my breast. My private skeleton was dragged out into the daylight without any ceremony whatever. It was his first appearance under those circumstances, and I was glad when M. Souvestre let him go back again into his closet. When, at last, we came to the Future, I own frankly that I was quite frightened. I had a good opportunity to test the popular theory that no man would have the courage, even if he had the chance, to lift the "silken, sad, uncertain" and very dark curtain of the Unreached; and in my case I found it to be perfectly correct. I would have readily paid M. Souvestre to let me off, but he was quite an Ancient Mariner in point of holding you until he should finish, and I was obliged to hear him out. After a long prologue on the difficulty he generally experienced in interpreting the various ramifications of the sanguineous cobweb-work in his globe, he finally came to Hecuba and, began to pour forth his predictions. Here, I am afraid, he was not quite so much at home as he had been. If I am to credit all that he promised, I may as well settle up every business concern at once, and set down quietly until Time shall see fit to make so many fair promises good. It is quite certain, I believe, that I am to marry five times before death; have a number of children, all of whom will be beautiful and intelligent; get several liberal legacies; achieve a most enviable reputation in one way and another; and live until I have seen eighty-three years, at which time I shall probably be quite a patriarch. These things cheer my spirits when I think of them; but I frequently meet persons who say to me what Dr. Primrose said to his Sophy: "How, child! Only that much for two shillings? I could have promised you more for half the money." I left M. Souvestre, my mind filled with many fantastic thoughts I never experienced before. How he could have told my Past and Present so successfully, and yet have been so greatly at fault, as I fear he was, with my future, is a subject for some reflection. Never could he have known so much about what no mortal but myself ever knew before, unless there are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in any philosophy but his own. LOVE IN HERMITAGE. BEHIND closed doors and double locks he bides, And quiver laid, forgotten, at his feet. A wreath of thorns, a knotted scourge hath he, Year after year the May-flowers smile and die; And winter snows drift ghostly to and fro. "Hath Summer come?" "Is Winter here?" saith he, And musing turns him to his rosary. BREVITIES. MATERNITY. THE great apparent aim and object of the life of all nature seems to be the perpetuation of its species. The seed of even the minutest plant is borne through the air, and falls into some chink or cranny, and however isolated from its kind, or barren and inappropriate the soil, it strives to the utmost to get root, and blossom, and fructify,-then to die. The Datura Stramonium is a beautiful example of this. Capable of being exalted into a shrub overreaching a man's head, with widespreading branches and broad plumes, and with its thorn-apples, or seed-pods, as large as a man's clenched fist, yet under less propitious circumstances, it dwindles, and if its surroundings are entirely adverse, it diminishes until its properties are dwarfed into insignificance, its whole size scarce exceeding an inch or two in altitude, and its tiny branches putting forth diminutive leaflets; yet, still in all its poverty and humbleness it forgets not the great duty given to it by its Creator, and on its lowly but honest part, blooms out its desiccated flowers, gathers its strength to fructify one tiny seed, still, however, full of vitality and vigor, and capable, under refreshing influences, of developing into the full stature of its God-given capacity. Look at the humble insect-the common spider, whose example of perseverance stimulated the Bruce to new exertion, and saved a nation from shame, and which may serve again to teach a recreant world its duty. See this ignoble spider sitting upon its ball of eggs. Harass this insect, generally so fearful, so ready to fly at the wind's jarring, she is immovable; take a stick and destroy the frail net around her. Though her laboriouslyconstructed home is swept away she yet remains hanging by a solitary thread, watching her incipient offspring. It is only with absolute death staring her in the face, and a violent separation from her holy charge, that suffices to break the bond implanted by Divinity in her nobler than human heart. Go into the wild wood, and the green fields. The birds of the air affect a tameness and a feebleness that they do not feel, and flutter in your path in the attempt, by inducing pursuit of themselves, to draw you away from their nest, concealed near by; and in our own barn-yard the timid fowl grow brave before our advancing step, and with rustling wings fly at us as we approach their inchoate nest, or their chirping brood. Moved by the divine instinct of reproduction the savage beast seeks its mate, shrinking not before any distance, lofty mountains, or plains and wide-spread rivers, and the dam, forgetful of all else than her high prerogative, seeks the most quiet solitudes to find a lair for her young. No dangers daunt her then; the lioness puts to shame the prowess of the hero in her defence of her litters. The huge hippopotamus makes her unwieldy bulk a shield for her feeble offspring from the arrows of the huntsman. The ponderous sperm whale takes her ignorant calf under her fin, and dives with it far below the blue wave to escape the dread lance of the har pooner. The walrus rips open with her savage tusks the boat containing the destroyer of her loved little one. No grizzly watch-dog is so fierce, no bull with glaring eye-balls, so formidable, no cat, even, whose velvet foot conceals a sharp claw, is so wrathful as the mother of either species who thinks that some danger threatens her offspring. How is it with the human mother, weighed in the balance? How does lordly man compare with the brute? There was a most touching pathos in the words which fell from the lips of a womanspeaker at the late Women's Rights' Convention. After a plea for the equality of payment for either sex for equal work, in which she said that this would do very much to take away the sin and prevent the shame of 20,000 women of this city living lives that could not be described, she said, with a tone I shall not forget: "There is something holy in maternity;" no matter under what circumstances we find it-like the Datura Stramonium in rich garden soil or in the sterile sands of the desert! I felt then, as her soft, sweet voice enunciated this truth-I have felt it often before, without possessing a consciousness of this thrilling truth-that however abject may be the mother, however low and degraded has been her life, however ignorant her mind or low her birth, or despised her race, when I |