Many blondes are very gentle, yielding in character, impressible, unelastic.  But the positive blondes, with the golden tint running through them, are often full of character.  They come, probably enough, from those deep-bosomed German women that Tacitus portrayed in such strong colors.  The negative blondes, or those women whose tints have faded out as their line of descent has become impoverished, are of various blood, and in them the soul has often become pale with that blanching of the hair and loss of color in the eyes which makes them approach the character of Albinesses.

I see in this young girl that union of strength and sensibility which, when directed and impelled by the strong instinct so apt to accompany this combination of active and passive capacity, we call genius.  She is not an accomplished artist, certainly, as yet; but there is always an air in every careless figure she draws, as it were of upward aspiration,—­the elan of John of Bologna’s Mercury,—­a lift to them, as if they had on winged sandals, like the herald of the Gods.  I hear her singing sometimes; and though she evidently is not trained, yet is there a wild sweetness in her fitful and sometimes fantastic melodies,—­such as can come only from the inspiration of the moment,—­strangely enough, reminding me of those long passages I have heard from my little neighbor’s room, yet of different tone, and by no means to be mistaken for those weird harmonies.

I cannot pretend to deny that I am interested in the girl.  Alone, unprotected, as I have seen so many young girls left in boarding-houses, the centre of all the men’s eyes that surround the table, watched with jealous sharpness by every woman, most of all by that poor relation of our landlady, who belongs to the class of women that like to catch others in mischief when they themselves are too mature for indiscretions, (as one sees old rogues turn to thief-catchers,) one of Nature’s gendarmerie, clad in a complete suit of wrinkles, the cheapest coat-of-mail against the shafts of the great little enemy,—­so surrounded, Iris spans this commonplace household-life of ours with her arch of beauty, as the rainbow, whose name she borrows, looks down on a dreary pasture with its feeding flocks and herds of indifferent animals.

These young girls that live in boarding-houses can do pretty much as they will.  The female gendarmes are off guard occasionally.  The sitting-room has its solitary moments, when any two boarders who wish to meet may come together accidentally, (accidentally, I said, Madam, and I had not the slightest intention of Italicizing the word,) and discuss the social or political questions of the day, or any other subject that may prove interesting.  Many charming conversations take place at the foot of the stairs, or while one of the parties is holding the latch of a door,—­in the shadow of porticoes, and especially on those outside balconies which some of our Southern neighbors call “stoops,” the most charming places in the world when the moon is just right and the roses and honeysuckles are in full blow,—­as we used to think in eighteen hundred and never mention it.