dom in breeches. The parting was a sad one. That chest of drawers had become a pet of mine. My very soul was locked up in it. I gave it a fond and final furbishing on the last morning of my stay, and then left it, as I thought, forever. A hundred youthful memories glimmered, like the fancies in the poet's magic mirror, from their shining front, when, a day or two ago, I again stood before it.

66 Royster," ," said the old dame, "I've had no one who could polish it since your time." With which

she opened the top drawer, and took something from the corner.

Ah me! it was a little pair of blue mittens my mother had knitted me, and which I must have left behind on my departure. I took them with a sigh (the hands of her who wove them will never more lay blessing on my head!) and measured them instinctively across my palm. What a tiny hand was mine, when those lambs' wool mufflers fitted it, and how often it has been aweary with labor and with pain since the last time I put them on!

NOTHING is so delightful as flattery. To hear and believe pleasant fictions about one's self is a temptation too seductive for weak mortals to resist, as the typical legends of all mythologies and the private histories of most individuals show; in consequence of which, home truths to one used to ideal portraiture, come like draughts of "bitter cup" to the dram-drinker. And flattery is dram-drinking: and yet not quite without good uses to balance its undeniable evil, if only it be exaggeration, and not wholly falsehood; that is, if it assumes as a matter of course the presence of virtues potential to the character, but not always active, and praises for what might be if the person chose to live up to his best. Many a weak brother and sister, and all children, can be heartened into goodness by a little bit of judicious praise or flattery, where ponderous exhortation and grave reproof would fail; just as a heavily-laden horse can be coaxed uphill when the whip and spur would lead to untimely jibbing. If, on the contrary, the

flattery is of a kind that makes you believe yourself an exceptionally fine fellow when you are only 66 mean trash,"-a king of men when you are nothing better or nobler than other common men— making you satisfied with yourself when at your worst, then it is an unmitigated evil; it then becomes dram-drinking of a very poisonous kind, which sooner or later does for your soul what unlimited blue ruin does for your body. But this is what we generally mean when we speak of flattery, and this is the kind which has got such a deservedly bad name with moralists of all ages.

The flatteries of men to women, and those of women to men, are very different in kind and direction. Men flatter women for what they are for their beauty, their grace, their sweetness, their charmingness in general; while a woman will flatter a man for what he does

for his speech last night, of which she understands little; for his book, of which she understands less; or for his pleading, of which she un

derstands nothing at all. Not that this signifies much on either side.

The most unintellectual little woman in the world has brains enough to look up in your face sweetly, and breathe out something that sounds like "beautiful, charming, so clever," vaguely sketching the outline of a hymn of praise to which your own vanity supplies the versicles. For you must have an exceptionally strong head if you can rate the sketch at its real value, and see for yourself how utterly meaningless it is. You may be the most mystical poet of the day, suggesting to your acutest readers grave doubts as to your own power of comprehending yourself; or you may be the most subtle metaphysician, to follow whom in your labyrinth of reasoning requires perhaps the rarest order of brains to be met with; but you will nevertheless believe any narrow-browed, small-headed woman who tells you in a low, sweet voice, with a gentle uplifting of her eyes, and a suggestive curve of the lip, that she has found you both intelligible and charming, and that she quite agrees with you, and shares your every sentiment. If she further tells you that all her life long she has thought in exactly the same way, but was wholly unable to express herself, and that you have now supplied her want and translated into words her vague ideas, and if she says this with a reverential kind of effusiveness, you are done for, so far as your critical power goes; and should some candid friend, whom she has not flattered, tell you with brutal frankness that your bewitching little flatterer has neither the brains nor the education to understand you, you will set him down as a slanderer, spiteful and malignant, and call his candor envy, because he has not been so lucky as yourself. The most subtle form of flattery is that which asks your advice, with the pretence of needing it

your advice, particularly-yours above that of all other persons, as the wisest, best, and most useful to be obtained. This, too, is a form that belongs rather to women in their relations with men, than the converse; though sometimes men will pretend to want a woman's advice about their affairs, and will perhaps make believe to be guided by it. Not unfrequently, however, asking one woman's opinion and advice about another is a masked manner of love-making on its own account; though sometimes it may be done for flattery only, when there are reasons. Of course not all advice-asking is flattery; but when intended only to please, and not meant to be genuine, it is perhaps one of the most potent instruments of the art to be met with.

There is one kind of flattery which is common to both men and women, and that is the expressed preference of sex. Thus, when men want to flatter women, they say how infinitely they prefer their society to that of their own sex; and women will say the same to men. Or, if they do not say it, they will act it. See a set of women congregated together without the light of a manly countenance among them. They may talk to each other certainly; and one or two will sit away together and discuss their private affairs with animation; but the great mass of them are only half vitalized while waiting the advent of the men to rouse them into life and the desire to please. No man who goes up first, and earlier than he was expected, from the dinner-table, can fail to see the change which comes over those wearied, limp, indifferentlooking faces and figures as soon as he enters the room. He is the prince whose kiss woke up the sleeping beauty, and all her court; and can any one say that this is not flattery of the most delightful kind? To be the Pygmalion even

for a moment, and for the weakest order of soul-giving, is about the greatest pleasure that a man can know, if he is susceptible to the finer kinds of flattery.

Some women, indeed, not only show their preference for men, but openly confess it, and confess at the same time to a lofty contempt or abhorrence for the society of women. These are generally women who are, or who have been, beauties, or who have literary and intellectual pretensions, or who despise babies and contemn housekeeping, and profess themselves unable to talk to other women because of their narrowness and stupidity. But for the most part they are women who, by their beauty or their position, have been used to receive extra attention from men, and thus their preference is not flattery so much as exigeance. Women who have been in countries where women are in the minority in society, are of this kind; and nothing is more amazing to them when they first come home than the attentions which a certain style of woman pays to men, instead of demanding and receiving attentions from them. These are those sweet, humble, caressing women who flatter you with every word and look, but whose flattery is nothing but a pretty dress put on for show, and taken off when the show is done with. Anything will do for an occasion with some people. Why, the way in which certain women will caress a child before you is an implied flattery, and they know it. If only they would be careful to carry these pretty antenuptial ways into the home, where nothing is to be gained by them but a humdrum husband's happiness! But too often the woman whose whole attitude was one of flattering devotion before her end was gained gives up every shred of that which she had in such profusion when she has attained her object, and lets the home go absolutely bare of that which

was so beautiful and seductive in the ball-room and the flirting cor

ner.

Some men, however, want more home flattery to keep them tolerably happy and up to the mark than any woman with a conscientious regard for truth can give. Poets and artists are of this kind-men who literally live on praise, without which they droop and can do nothing. With them it is absolutely necessary that the people with whom they are associated should be of appreciative and sympathetic natures; but the burden comes heavy when they want, as they generally do, so much more than this. For, in truth, they want flattery in excess of sympathy; and if they do not get it they hold themselves as the victims of an unkind fate, and fill the world with the echo of their woes. This is nine-tenths of the cause why great geniuses are So often unhappy in married life. They demand more, and more incessant, flattery than can be kept up by one woman, unless she has not only an exceptional power of love, but also an exceptional power of self-suppression; they think that by virtue of their genius they are entitled to a Benjamin's mess of devotion, double that given to other men; and when they get only Judah's share, they cry out that they are ill-used, and make the world think them ill-used as well. But though a little home-flattery helps the home life immeasurably, and greases the creaking domestic wheels more than anything else can, a great deal is just the most pernicious thing that can be offered.

The belief prevalent in some families that all the very small and commonplace members thereof are wonders and greater than any one else

that no one is so clever as Harry, no one so pretty as Julia, that Amy's red hair is of a more brilliant gold than can be found elsewhere, and Edward's mathematical

the face of nature, and reveals trees and flowers and shrubs putting forth their early blossoms and creating a new verdure, then ascend from millions of pure souls a sweet odor of prayer and of praise to the throne of the Virgin of Is rael, the Queen of May; and when the glorious planet sinks in "coral and pearly hues "casting its golden sheen over the fair earth, again does incense and a sweet oblation rise from countless hearts devoted to Mary. Virgins come with fresh flowers to adorn her altars; the voices of children unite in canticles of praise in her honor; widows deposit at her feet the cross they have been called upon to bear. From all, the homage is deep, sincere and hearty, and tendered with glad or consoled hearts. Who shall number the miracles in nature and of grace, wrought in answer to these devotions?

It was our privilege to assist some years ago at the devotions for the month of May in the private chapel of a convent in a small town of Northern France. A few weeks before the first of the month an old volume had been discovered which when freed from the accumulated dust of more than a century, proved to be a record of miracles, properly attested, wrought through the mediation of our Lady of Loretto in connection with a small black statue, which in its quaint old niche stood unnoticed in a corner of the nun's choir.

Physicians and mayors had appended their signatures to thirtytwo miraculous cures.

It was also found that the convent held the precious statue only on condition of its being exposed to public veneration.

In the 13th century, when the good religious, under the name of Servants of All," devoted themselves to the care of sick and convalescent pilgrims from the Holy Land, a pious knight, the brother of

one of the nuns, having been to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, brought with him on his return a small black statue of the Blessed Virgin which had touched the famed image of our Lady of Loretto. Placing it in a little oratory he made a practice of never leaving or entering his house without first paying his respects to "Sa chère Dame." At his death he bequeathed his dear statue to his sister at the convent, with the proviso that the public should be allowed entrance to that part of the church in which it was placed. The statue was placed over the High Altar, and a door was opened from the church to the street, so as to admit the townspeople, who flocked to the shrine of the "Knight's Lady." Thirty-two miracles rewarded their faith. . . . . When the book was found the Superiors of the convent at once resolved to discharge their obligations in relation to the statue, which was taken from the choir and again placed over the High Altar. It was arranged that during the ensuing month of May one miracle should be read in the church at the devotions of each day. Again did the pious inhabitants of the town hasten, like their ancestors of five centuries before, to pay their homage to the Lady of Loretto, and again did she manifest her power. A child, five years of age, fell one evening from a window of the third story of a house on to the large clumsy stones, the common pavement of towns in the north of France. The little girl, a bruised and panting mass, was carried in and laid upon a couch. A servant was dispatched for a physician. Having examined the child, he turned to the half-distracted mother and said: "Madame, your child is dying; she is even now almost in her agony; human skill can do nothing now, but God may. The whole town is talking of the miraculous statue sent—”