touch, I find it difficult to realize the connection between my
brother and his work, though I see them before me not six inches
apart. Will this quaint spectacle possess any humorous
attractions for Miss Jessie? Perhaps it may. There is some slight
chance that Owen's employment will be lucky enough to interest
her.

Thus far my morning cogitations advance doubtfully enough, but
they altogether fail in carrying me beyond the narrow circle of
The Glen Tower. I try hard, in our visitor's interest, to look
into the resources of the little world around us, and I find my
efforts rewarded by the prospect of a total blank.

Is there any presentable living soul in the neighborhood whom we
can invite to meet her? Not one. There are, as I have already
said, no country seats near us; and society in the county town
has long since learned to regard us as three misanthropes,
strongly suspected, from our monastic way of life and our dismal
black costume, of being popish priests in disguise. In other
parts of England the clergyman of the parish might help us out of
our difficulty; but here in South Wales, and in this latter half
of the nineteenth century, we have the old type parson of the
days of Fielding still in a state of perfect preservation. Our
local clergyman receives a stipend which is too paltry to bear
comparison with the wages of an ordinary mechanic. In dress,
manners, and tastes he is about on a level with the upper class
of agricultural laborer. When attempts have been made by
well-meaning gentlefolks to recognize the claims of his
profession by asking him to their houses, he has been known, on
more than one occasion, to leave his plowman's pair of shoes in