serves America much as AEsop’s stork did the frogs:  we are appallingly free to be devoured by envy, stabbed by calumny, strangled by slander.  I believe if I were a painter, and desired to portray Cleopatra’s death, I would assuredly give to the asp the baleful features and sneering smirk of Mrs. Prudence.  Every Sunday when she twists those two curls on her forehead till they lift themselves like horns, puts up her eye-glasses and pays her respects to our pew, I catch myself whispering ‘Cerastes!’ and wishing that I were only the camera of a photographer.”

“Take care, mother! would you accept a homestead in your contemplated ’Reservation’?”

She pinched his ear.

“Don’t presume, sir, to preach to me.  Really, I often wonder how Peyton can force himself to smile and parry the vinegar cruets that woman throws at him in the shape of observations upon the ’rapid decline of evangelical piety,’ and the ‘sadly backslidden nature’ of the clergy.”

“Because he is the very best man in the world, and faithfully practises what he preaches—­Christian charity.  What is Mrs. Pru’s latest grievance?”

“That Peyton does not admit her to his confidence, and supply her with all the particulars of Regina’s history and family, which he withholds even from you and me, and about which we should never dream of catechizing him.  In a better cause, her bold effrontery would be sublime.  Fortunately she was absent in Vermont for some months after the child came, and curiosity had subsided into indifference until she returned,—­when lo! a geyser of righteous anxiety and suspicion boiled up in the congregation, and wellnigh scalded us.  What do you suppose she blandly asked me one day, in the child’s presence?  ’Were not Mr. Hargrove’s friends mistaken in believing he had never married?’ Now I contend that the law of the land should indict for just such cruel and wicked innuendoes, because these social crimes that the statutes do not reach work almost as much mischief and misery as those offences against public peace which the laws declare penal.  I confess Mrs. Potter is my bete-noire, and I feel as no doubt Paul did when he wrote to Timothy:  ’Alexander the coppersmith did me much evil; the Lord reward him according to his works.’”

“Mother, what reply did you make to her?  I can imagine you towering like Mrs. Siddons.”

“You may be sure I unmasked a battery.  I looked straight into her little faded grey eyes, which straggle away from each other as if ashamed of their mutual ferret experiences,—­for you know one looks out so, and one turns always up,—­and I answered, that my brother had been exceedingly fortunate, as, notwithstanding the numerous matrimonial nets adroitly spread for him, he had escaped, like the Psalmist, ‘as a bird out of the snare of the fowlers,’ and fled for safety unto the mountain of celibacy.  Bishop, if the new school of science lack the link that binds us to the ophidian type, I