It must be confessed that the position in which Mr. Bernard now found himself had a pleasing danger about it which might well justify all the fears entertained on his account by more experienced friends, when they learned that he was engaged in a Young Ladies’ Seminary.  The school never went on more smoothly than during the first period of his administration, after he had arranged its duties, and taken his share, and even more than his share, upon himself.  But human nature does not wait for the diploma of the Apollinean Institute to claim the exercise of it, instincts and faculties.  These young girls saw but little of the youth of the neighborhood.  The mansion-house young men were off at college or in the cities, or making love to each other’s sisters, or at any rate unavailable for some reason or other.  There were a few “clerks,”—­that is, young men who attended shops, commonly called “stores,”—­who were fond of walking by the Institute, when they were off duty, for the sake of exchanging a word or a glance with any one of the young ladies they might happen to know, if any such were stirring abroad:  crude young men, mostly, with a great many “Sirs” and “Ma’ams” in their speech, and with that style of address sometimes acquired in the retail business, as if the salesman were recommending himself to a customer, “First-rate family article, Ma’am; warranted to wear a lifetime; just one yard and three quarters in this pattern, Ma’am; sha’n’t I have the pleasure?” and so forth.  If there had been ever so many of them, and if they had been ever so fascinating, the quarantine of the Institute was too rigorous to allow any romantic infection to be introduced from without.

Anybody might see what would happen, with a good-looking, well-dressed, well-bred young man, who had the authority of a master, it is true, but the manners of a friend and equal, moving about among these young girls day after day, his eyes meeting theirs, his breath mingling with theirs, his voice growing familiar to them, never in any harsh tones, often soothing, encouraging, always sympathetic, with its male depth and breadth of sound among the chorus of trebles, as if it were a river in which a hundred of these little piping streamlets-might lose themselves; anybody might see what would happen.  Young girls wrote home to their parents that they enjoyed themselves much, this term, at the Institute, and thought they were making rapid progress in their studies.  There was a great enthusiasm for the young master’s reading-classes in English poetry.  Some of the poor little things began to adorn themselves with an extra ribbon, or a bit of such jewelry as they had before kept for great occasions.  Dear souls! they only half knew what they were doing it for.  Does the bird know why its feathers grow more brilliant and its voice becomes musical in the pairing season?