vitality and keen sensuous delight in all the surface activities and pleasures of life, the intellectual side of her nature should be kept in the background and not properly nourished.  He had compelled her to study, to think, to write.  Who would do this for her in the new home?  He knew enough of Stephen White’s nature to fear that he, while he might be an appreciative friend, would not be a stimulating one.  He was too dreamy and pleasure-loving himself to be a spur to others.  A vague wonder, almost like a presentiment, haunted his thoughts continually as to the nature of the relation which would exist between Stephen and Mercy.  One day he wrote a long letter to Stephen, telling him all about Mercy,—­her history; her peculiarities, mental and moral; her great need of mental training; her wonderful natural gifts.  He closed his letter in these words:—­

“There is the making of a glorious woman and, I think, a true poet in this girl; but whether she ever makes either will depend entirely upon the hands she falls into.  She has a capacity for involuntary adaptation of herself to any surroundings, and for an unconscious and indomitable loyalty to the every-day needs of every-day life, which rarely go with the poetic temperament.  She would contentedly make bread and do nothing else, till the day of her death, if that seemed to be the nearest and most demanded duty.  She would be heartily faithful and joyous every day, in intercourse with only common and uncultivated people, if fate sets her among them.  She seems to me sometimes to be more literally a child of God, in the true and complete sense of the word ‘child,’ than any one I ever knew.  She takes every thing which comes to her just as a happy and good little child takes every thing that is given to him, and is pleased with all; yet she is not at all a religious person.  I am often distressed by her lack of impulse to worship.  I think she has no strong sense of a personal God; yet her conscience is in many ways morbidly sensitive.  She is a most interesting and absorbing person,—­one entirely unique in my experience.  Living with her, as you will, it will be impossible for you not to influence her strongly, one way or the other; and I want to enlist your help to carry on the work I have begun.  She owes it to herself and to the world not to let her mind be inactive.  I am very much mistaken if she has not within her the power to write poems, which shall take place among the work that lasts.”

Mr. Allen read this letter over several times, and then, with a gesture of impatience, tore the sheets down the middle, and threw them into the fire, exclaiming,—­

“Pshaw! as if there were any use in sending a man a portrait of a woman he is to see every day.  If Stephen is the person to amount to any thing in her life, he will recognize her.  If he is not, all my descriptions of her will be thrown away.  It is best to let things take their own course.”