frivolous external things. I could fancy a love for life
here almost possible; and I was a fixed unbeliever in
any love of a year's standing. One state resembles
setting a hungry man down to a single dish, on which
he may concentrate his entire appetite and do it justice;
the other, introducing him to a table laid out by French
cooks. He can perhaps extract as much enjoyment from
the whole, but each part is a mere atom in his regard
and remembrance."

"Oh, here we are the same as anywhere else, when you
get to know us," observed Mrs. Dean, somewhat puzzled
at my speech.

"Excuse me," I responded. "You, my good friend,
are a striking evidence against that assertion. Except-
ing a few provincialisms of slight consequence, you have
no marks of the manners which I am habituated to
consider as peculiar to your class. I am sure you have
thought a great deal more than the generality of servants
think. You have been compelled to cultivate your
reflective faculties, for want of occasions for frittering
your life away in silly trifles."

Mrs. Dean laughed.

"I certainly esteem myself a steady, reasonable kind
of body," she said--"not exactly from living among the
hills and seeing one set of faces and one series of actions
from year's end to year's end, but I have undergone
sharp, discipline, which has taught me wisdom; and then,
I have read more than you would fancy, Mr. Lockwood.
You could not open a book in this library that I have not
looked into, and got something out of also--unless it be
that range of Greek and Latin, and that of French; and
those I know one from another. It is as much as you can
expect of a poor man's daughter. However, if I am to
follow my story in true gossip's fashion, I had better go
on; and instead of leaping three years, I will be content
to pass to the next summer--the summer of 1778; that
is nearly twenty-three years ago."

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