"Decipit exemplar vitiis imitabile."

Thy faults have attracted them, not the virtues that redeem them. Shake
thyself free of such, and with those who have loved much, and to whom
much has been forgiven, go in peace! The shades of the Poets will greet
thee as they greeted Dante and Virgil, when, thyself a shade, thou goest
towards them. The heart that fainted at Francesca's sorrows will not
refuse a throb to thine. For there is a gallery of great women, great
with and without sin, where thou must sit, between Sappho and Cleopatra,
the Magdalen thy neighbor,--nor yet removed wholly out of sight the
Mother of the Great Forgiveness of God.

* * * * *


HAIR-CHAINS.


It was really a magnificent ball! The host had determined that his
entertainment should minister to all the senses of his guests, and had
succeeded so well that there was only room to regret there were but five
senses to be gratified. Only five gates in the fortified wall within
which the shy soul intrenches itself, where an attack may be made. And
even when these are all carried by storm, there are sometimes inner
citadels, impregnable to the magic torrent streaming through the
Beautiful Gates, where she may survey intruders with calm disdain. In
vain floods of delicious intoxication beat against her lofty retreat:
she calmly analyzes the sweet poison, (as she thinks it,) separates and
retains the solid fact whose solution had enriched the otherwise barren