I have been for some months established in this place, turning the main crank of the machinery for the manufactory of accomplishments superintended by, or rather worked to the profit of, a certain Mr. Silas Peckham.  He is a poor wretch, with a little thin fishy blood in his body, lean and flat, long-armed and large-handed, thick-jointed and thin-muscled,—­you know those unwholesome, weak-eyed, half-fed creatures, that look not fit to be round among live folks, and yet not quite dead enough to bury.  If you ever hear of my being in court to answer to a charge of assault and battery, you may guess that I have been giving him a thrashing to settle off old scores; for he is a tyrant, and has come pretty near killing his principal lady-assistant with overworking her and keeping her out of all decent privileges.

Helen Darley is this lady’s name,—­twenty-two or -three years old, I should think,—­a very sweet, pale woman,—­daughter of the usual country-clergyman,—­thrown on her own resources from an early age, and the rest:  a common story, but an uncommon person,—­very.  All conscience and sensibility, I should say,—­a cruel worker,—­no kind of regard for herself,—­seems as fragile and supple as a young willow-shoot, but try her and you find she has the spring in her of a steel crossbow.  I am glad I happened to come to this place, if it were only for her sake.  I have saved that girl’s life; I am as sure of it as if I had pulled her out of the fire or water.

Of course I’m in love with her, you say,—­we always love those whom we have benefited:  “saved her life,—­her love was the reward of his devotion,” etc., etc., as in a regular set novel.  In love, Philip?  Well, about that,—­I love Helen Darley—­very much:  there is hardly anybody I love so well.  What a noble creature she is!  One of those that just go right on, do their own work and everybody else’s, killing themselves inch by inch without ever thinking about it,—­singing and dancing at their toil when they begin, worn and saddened after a while, but pressing steadily on, tottering by-and-by, and catching at the rail by the wayside to help them lift one foot before the other, and at last falling, face down, arms stretched forward——­

Philip, my boy, do you know I am the sort of man that locks his door sometimes and cries his heart out of his eyes,—­that can sob like a woman and not be ashamed of it?  I come of fighting-blood on my mother’s side, you know; I think I could be savage on occasion.  But I am tender,—­more and more tender as I come into my fulness of manhood.  I don’t like to strike a man, (laugh, if you like,—­I know I hit hard when I do strike,)—­but what I can’t stand is the sight of these poor, patient, toiling women, that never find out in this life how good they are, and never know what it is to be told they are angels while they still wear the pleasing incumbrances of humanity.  I don’t know what to make of these cases.  To think that