can only say that it did so by making her so ashamed ever to have had anything to do with such people, and making her see how much she had tried her father and mother by her folly.  This again Breckon contends is not clear, but he says we live in a universe of problems in which another, more or less, does not much matter.  He is always expecting that some chance shall confront him with Bittridge, and that the man’s presence will explain everything; for, like so many Ohio people who leave their native State, the Bittridges have come East instead of going West, in quitting the neighborhood of Tuskingum.  He is settled with his idolized mother in New York, where he is obscurely attached to one of the newspapers.  That he has as yet failed to rise from the ranks in the great army of assignment men may be because moral quality tells everywhere, and to be a clever blackguard is not so well as to be simply clever.  If ever Breckon has met his alter ego, as he amuses himself in calling him, he has not known it, though Bittridge may have been wiser in the case of a man of Breckon’s publicity, not to call it distinction.  There was a time, immediately after the Breckons heard from Tuskingum that the Bittridges were in New York, when Ellen’s husband consulted her as to what might be his duty towards her late suitor in the event which has not taken place, and when he suggested, not too seriously, that Richard’s course might be the solution.  To his suggestion Ellen answered:  “Oh no, dear!  That was wrong,” and this remains also Richard’s opinion.

PG EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

    A nature which all modesty and deference seemed left out of
    All but took the adieus out of Richard’s hands
    Americans spoil their women!  “Well, their women are worth it”
    An inscrutable frown goes far in such exigencies
    Another problem, more or less, does not much matter
    Certain comfort in their mutual discouragement
    Conscience to own the fact and the kindness to deny it
    Fatuity of a man in such things
    Fatuity of age regarding all the things of the past
    Fertile in difficulties and so importunate for their solution
    Girl is never so much in danger of having her heart broken
    Good comrades, as elderly married people are apt to be
    He was too little used to deference from ladies
    Impart their sufferings as well as their pleasures to each other
    Know more of their clothes than the people they buy them of
    Learning to ask her no questions about herself
    Left him alone to the first ecstasy of his homesickness
    Living in the present
    Melting into pity against all sense of duty
    Misgiving of a blessed immortality
    More faith in her wisdom than she had herself
    More helpful with trouble to be ignorant of its cause
    Not find more harm in them, if you did not bring it with you