Faces in the Fire, and Other Fancies

or from the lurid horrors of a burning building. It is very good of the lady in the novel. I admire the gratitude which prompts her romantic affection, and, nine times out of ten, my judgement cordia

hat this sort of thing is strictly confined to novels and theatricals. In real life, men and women do not fall in love out of gratitude. As a mat

der an obligation to them. If, instead of telling us that the heroine fell in love with the man who had saved her from drowning, the novelist had told us that the man who risked his life by plunging into the river fell in love with the white and upturned face as he laid it gently on the bank; or if, instead of telling us that the patient fell in love with the nurse, he had told us that the nurse fell in love with the patient upon whom she had lavished such beautiful devotion, he would have been much more true to nature and to real life. It is indisputable, of course, that, the rescuer having 48 fallen in love with the rescued, she may soon discover his secret, and, since love begets love, reciprocate his affection. It is equally true that, the nurse having conceived so tender a passion

eople's doors knows exactly what I mean. The very sound of the knock tells you a good deal. Such 49 sounds are of three kinds. There is the echoing and reverberating knock that tells you of bare boards; there is the dead and sombre thud that tells of linoleum on the floor; and there is the softened and muffled t

augh and cry at the drollery and pathos with which, in all his books, he invests chairs, tables, clocks, pictures, and every other article of furniture. I fancy I should feel life to be less worth living if I were deprived of some of the household odds and ends with which all my felicity 50 seems to be mysteriously associated. But I cannot conceive of myself as yielding to even a momentary sensation of tenderness over the sale, destruction, or exchange of any of the linoleums. I feel perfectly certain that neither Stevenson nor Dickens would ever have felt an at

inoleum, both pretty 51 and useful, and I feel for it no fondness whatsoever; I remain as cold as ice, and as hard as adamant. Why is it? To begin with, I fancy the pattern has something to do with it. I do not now refer to any particular pattern; but to all the linoleum patterns that were ever designed. Those endless squares and circles and diamonds and stars! Could anything be more repelling? Here, for instance, on the linoleum, I find a star. I know at once that if I look I shall see hundreds of similar

epelled by the monotony of the pattern on the linoleum. In the old days it was customary to plaster the walls, even of sick-rooms, with papers of patterns equally pronounced, and many a poor patient was tortured almost to death by the glaring geometrical abominations. The doctor said that the sufferer was to be kept perfectly quiet; yet the pattern on the wall is allowed to scream at him and shout at him from night until morning, and from morning until night. He has counted those awful stars or roses, perpendicularly, horizontally, diagonally, from right to left, from left to right, from top to bottom, and from bottom to top, until the hideous monstrosities are reproduced in frightful duplicate upon the fevere

r than a man whose life was painfully regular. It may have been an over-statement of the case; but there is something in it. We fall in love with good people, and we fall in love with bad people;

us climbings and tumbl

the village, the ri

urse-mouth when my fat

my mother, the moon

was regular-and as un

has neither sa

ut face, as I found wh

let it be granted her

her eyes were down

s, icily regular,

fection,

among the sons of men, was altogether good. It is the most charming and the most varied life-story that has ever been written since this little world began. Its lovely deeds and graceful speech, its tender pathos and its awful tragedy, have won the hearts of men

MacDonald, in Robert Falconer, says that 'there is a well-authenticated story of a notorious convict who was reformed by entering, in one of the colonies, a church where the matting along the aisle was of the same pattern as that in the church to which he had gone wit

chilling; her 'cold and clear-cut face, faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null!' And that is precisely the trouble with every system of religion, morality, or philosophy-save one-that has ever been presented to the minds of men. Plato and Aristotle and Marcus 56 Aurelius were splendid, simply splendid; but

sweet, tend

nt help

has yet

e its G

ause He first loved us.' The monotony and frigidity of the linoleum have given way