"Let us go to breakfast, Mr.Goldencalf--my father has ridden across the country to visit Dr.Liturgy." "Anna," I said, after seating myself and taking a cup of tea from fingers that were rosy as the morn, "I fear you are the greatest enemy that I have on earth." "John Goldencalf!" exclaimed the startled girl, turning pale and then flushing violently.

"Pray explain yourself." "I love you to my heart's core--could marry you, and then, I fear, worship you, as man never before worshipped woman." Anna laughed faintly.
"And you feel in danger of the sin of idolatry ?" she at length succeeded in saying.
"No, I am in danger of narrowing my sympathies--of losing a broad and safe hold of life--of losing my proper stake in society--of--in short, of becoming as useless to my fellows as my poor, poor father, and of making an end as miserable.

Oh! Anna, could you have witnessed the hopelessness of that death-bed, you could never wish me a fate like his!" My pen is unequal to convey an adequate idea of the expression with which Anna regarded me.

Wonder, doubt, apprehension, affection, and anguish were all beaming in her eyes; but the unnatural brightness of these conflicting sentiments was tempered by a softness that resembled the pearly lustre of an Italian sky.
"If I yield to my fondness, Anna, in what will my condition differ from that of my miserable father's?
He concentrated his feelings in the love of money, and I--yes, I feel it here, I know it is here--I should love you so intensely as to shut out every generous sentiment in favor of others.

I have a fearful responsibility on my shoulders--wealth, gold; gold beyond limits; and to save my very soul I must extend not narrow my interest in my fellow-creatures.