you and Mrs. Temple; besides, it was my own fault. Just add, if you please, that I hope to be able to write in a few days myself at greater length, and that will do." Fanny wrote diligently for a few minutes, and then with an air of profound attention read over the letter, crossing out here and there. "I really feel quite ashamed of myself," she said, taking a fresh sheet of paper. "But Mrs. Temple would send me.'

To this Galbraith made no immediate repy-he even moved away to the window, not to draw his secretary's attention from her task-but as soon as it was accomplished, he said as he glanced over the result, "Then it bores Mrs. Temple to write for me?"

"No, no!" returned Fanny in a tone of palpably polite denial. "She is always very obliging; but to-day she was busy, and anxious to get everything out of the way before our London agent comeshis coming is always an event, you know." "Indeed," said Galbraith, availing himself of her disposition to talk. "Perhaps he is a friend as well as an agent."

"Oh, yes,” replied Fanny, dotting the "i's" and crossing the "t's" of the letter he returned to her to be folded and addressed, and just glancing up at intervals to see the effect of her words, "he is a dear old friend of Mrs. Temple's. She knew him before she was married, and he is so kind."

“Indeed," said Sir Hugh, pulling out his moustache and staring away into vacancy, "indeed! I suppose he is an old experienced man of business?"

Oh, very experienced! But as to age -well, he is older than I am."

"Older than you are!" echoed Galbraith. "Why, you are younger than your sister, or cousin, whichever it is!" "You mean Mrs. Temple," said Fanny, avoiding a direct reply as to the relationship. "Yes, she is older than I am; but you know the great firms don't like elderly travellers."

"He is a traveller, then ?" Fanny nodded.

Galbraith hesitated: he felt it would not be honorable to cross-examine this little, good-humored chatterbox; still he longed to have some more talk upon the interesting topic of the "London agent," for he felt strangely savage at the idea of confounded commercial traveller-a

1

fellow redolent of bad cigars, audacious with the effrontery acquired by bar and billiard-rooms, vulgarly fine, and hideously ill-dressed, coming into close contact with his queenly landlady-indeed, the notion of any man, high or low, coming into that quiet, simple Eden where he had hitherto been the Adam, was infinitely disgusting and vexatious. Meantime, Miss Fanny watched with supreme satisfaction the dropping of his brows and general clouding over of his countenance; silence had lasted long enough she thought, so she said softly, You will not mention what I repeated just now? I mean, what Mrs. Temple said." You may trust me. Would the consequences be dreadful? Would she give you a wigging?" "No; but it would vex her, and she has had enough to vex her." "I feared so.

of thing?"

Reverses, and that sort

"Yes; oh, she has been robbed and plundered in the most shameful manner, and basely treated altogether."

"Did you know the late Temple ?"

'No; but I have seen him.” "Well," said Galbraith, gallantly resisting his inclination to get the whole truth from Fanny, "I shall have a melancholy evening all alone here. You have been very good to let me come and have a talk with you sometimes; I imagine you have done more for me than old Slade. However, I must make up my mind to solitude for to-night."

"And to-morrow night," said Fanny, pressing the top of her pen against her lips, as she looked up mischievously.

"You need not warn me off the premises," said Galbraith, with a smile. “I did not intend to intrude to-morrow evening, nor until I am asked."

Now, there! I never can do or say anything right!" cried Fanny in pretty despair. "I only meant to say, that although to-morrow will be Sunday, we must talk of business, because he comes so seldom, and then you might not like Tom, and Tom might not like you!"

"Tom' might not like me, eh? So you call your agent Tom."

"You would not have me call him Mr. - Jones," cried Fanny, picking herself up just in time; and then reflecting, with horror, "That is a shocking story, I wish I hadn't said it."

"Tom Jones," repeated Sir Hugh, laughing, a dangerous sort of name. No, you are quite right to prefer Tom to Mr. Jones."

"I must go away," exclaimed Fanny. "I have quite finished the letter. Oh! I forgot-Dr. Slade left word that he could not call this evening, because Lady Styles has returned, and he is going to dine with her."

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'Lady Styles!" repeated Galbraith. "Does she not live at a place called Weston? I believe she is an aunt, or cousin, or grandmother of Upton's."

"Of this gentleman's," said Fanny, holding up the letter. "Then I am sure you will not be at a loss for society any longer she will come and see you every day and tell you everything, and make you tell everything. She is fond of KMrs. Temple," remembering the strict injunctions she had received not to breathe the name of Kate; "but she nearly drives her mad with questions."

"But what would induce her to trouble herself about me?"

"She was here the evening you were brought in like a dead creature-what a fright we had!-and you may be sure she has written to this Mr. Upton to know all about you."

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"This will be a visitation! I am glad you have given me a hint," returned Gal braith. And you must go? you couldn't leave Mrs. Temple and her agent to talk business, and make my tea?"

"Indeed I could not," said Fanny indignantly.

'Well, good morning, Miss Lee," rejoined Galbraith, laughing; "remember, I will not venture downstairs again unless I am asked."

"And then Mrs. Temple will know I have been committing some stupidity," cried Fanny, forgetting her dignity. "Do come down to tea on Monday, Sir Hugh!"

"What! even if' Tom' is there?" "Ah! there is no chance of that," said Fanny, shaking her head.

"If I have any letters to answer I will venture down, then, to ask for assistance," replied Galbraith, smiling, and opening the door for her to pass out. As he did so the sound of a man's voice and some slight commotion rose up from below; while Fanny started, blushed, and bright

ened all over, like some rippling stream when the sun suddenly shines out from behind a cloud; and, with a hasty "good morning," went quickly away.

"I suspect Tom' is in clover when he comes down here," thought Galbraith, closing the door and resuming his armchair and a tough article in the 'Quarterly.' He can't make love to both of them, and that nice little thing takes no common interest in his coming. Who the deuce can he be? What can they all be! They are more than tradespeople. I wish I could get at their history. Miss Fanny let out they were not real shopkeepers. Pooh! what is it to me? I have no business to pry into Mrs. Temple's affairs; she would pull me up very short if I tried. I will go away next week it I feel strong. The Doctor says I must take care of my head, and I shall never be so quiet anywhere as here. I wish that old woman may break her leg, or her neck, or anything to prevent her coming here to destroy one's comfort," for Galbraith felt it would never do to have his fair landlady's letter-writing and general intercourse with a man of his position known over and over again he revolved the subject in his mind. The 'Quarterly' was thrown to the other end of the room. He could not bear the idea of leaving; and yet go he ought, he must. At last he started up, put on his hat, and walked away to the stables he had taken, to have a chat about the "bonnie beasts" with his servant, a Yorkshireman, and get rid of himself. He had not yet given up his invalid habits of early dinner and

a

"something" mild and strengthening before he went to bed. Both in going out and returning he heard the sound of merry voices and laughter, pleasant, refined laughter, as he passed the door of the best sitting-room; evidently "Tom" was an acquisition; it was no wonder they did not want him, Hugh Galbraith!

His servant noticed that he was more than usually silent, and very severe about some trifling neglect in the stable.

Even Mills did not get a civil look when she brought him some admirable scolloped oysters; but at last the uncomfortable evening was over, Galbraith's last waking thought being interrogative, "Who the deuce is Tom?"

[To be continued.]

How much money would one like to have? This is a question which has rather a speculative than a practical interest for most of us; and we are generally inclined to make the simple reply, "As much as we can get ;" to which may or may not be added the qualification, "without stealing." We may leave it to moralists to point out the folly of overanxiety for money, or to prove that all wealth is but a burden for the nobler spirit. We will be content to admit that, as a matter of fact, most people would rather have a guinea than a pound, and that, as far as their immediate personal comfort is concerned, they are generally right. Few people have practically to consider what is the superior limit to the desirableness of money; and yet, if a wise man were invited to fix his income with a simple view to his own personal comfort, he would probably be content with a place rather below the highest degree of the scale. Let us consider where he ought to draw the line. It is plain, in the first place, that he would place himself above the point of actual suffering. The greatest break in the social scale is that at which a man ceases to feel any appreciable anxiety as to his personal independence. When the danger of actual starvation, or of being only saved from starvation by the workhouse, ceases to be appreciable, a man has received the greatest benefit that wealth can give him. Johnson once observed, after looking at the house of some very rich man, that all this wealth excluded only one evil-poverty. The remark may not be logically accurate, but it points to a substantial truth. Downright want of food or clothes, actual physical suffering caused by poverty, is an evil so great that no other service which can be rendered by wealth is equal to that of removing it. If a man has sufficient means to secure the full development of his mental and bodily faculties, and to enjoy their exercise without anxiety as to the future, he has, we may say, reached dry land, and it is comparatively a matter of little importance how far he may afterwards climb above the level of the floods. Indeed this is to estimate his requirements too highly. A complete development would seem to

imply that a man should be able to receive the most thorough education obtainable at the period. The worst evil of poverty disappears when a man has gained a firm footing on some step of the social ladder at which physical privations are not felt as a present or probable evil. The owner, for example, of a few acres, as he is described by the admirers of small landed estates, may be as free as a millionnaire from any doubts as to a sufficiency of food and clothing. He cannot have any intellectual faculties which he may possess developed to the highest conceivable pitch, but he has full play for his faculties in their actual stage of development. A skilled artisan, a comfortable farmer, or even an ordinary laborer in a region where there is a steady demand for his services, may have all his requirements sufficiently satisfied, and be in no fear that he will ever be unable to satisfy them. In some distant millennium every member of the community may be capable of the highest intellectual and aesthetic enjoyments. In any period to which we can look forward, it would be amply sufficient if the lower classes were rich enough to be out of all danger of physical deterioration, and civilized enough to prefer rational to brutalizing enjoyments. The most positive evils of poverty would then have disappeared.

From this point of relative comfort there is a continuous gradation up to the other point at which wealth becomes a burden. The difficulty is to fix this latter point. where. Every pound added to one's income must give, ceteris paribus, less pleasure than the preceding pound; and for the simple reason that we naturally spend our income on satisfying our most pressing wants. As one by one we have stopped up every avenue through which discomfort approaches, we have to tax our ingenuity to discover new modes of positive gratification. As the human faculties are limited, this becomes difficult or even impossible, except at the price of making ourselves slaves to our wealth. Of course, if a man chooses to muddle away his fortune in almsgiving or gambling, there is no income of which he may not easily disburden himself. We are simply in

Evidently it must come some

quiring how much he can judiciously spend upon his own comfort. The list of physical pleasures is very soon exhausted. A man has but one palate and one pair of hands. Even if he wore a new coat every day, he would soon find that an old coat is far more comfortable; and the most skillful cooks will admit that dishes only become very expensive by being out of season or by useless extravagance. A house of moderate size is as comfortable as a palace; and a few hundreds a year will provide the best of dwellings in the best of situations. Building, indeed, is a temptation, because architects have an almost unrivalled skill in getting rid of money; but building houses for oneself very soon becomes building prisons. There are disadvantages even in a single country house for a man living in town. It forces him to spend part of his summers in a particular place, when he might prefer travelling; it obliges him to entertain friends of whom a large percentage are certain to be bores; and it subjects him, unless he is a very strong-minded person indeed, to the necessity of taking a part in various troublesome local duties. Admitting, however, that a couple of establishments give more pleasure than trouble, we have still not passed the bounds of a reasonable income. The next question is, how much a man can spend upon his pleasures, and here there is of course a wide field for expenditure. Assuming, however, that a wise man would wish to be respectable, and that he has certain intellectual tastes, his tether is not a very long one. A man of literary or artistic culture may wish to form a library or a picture-gallery. But even here, so far as books are intended for reading and pictures for being looked at, the powers of money are moderate. A library of a few thousand volumes will provide the greatest of literary gluttons with all the books from which he really derives enjoyment; and so large a proportion of the best pictures

public galleries that a comparatively moderate collection will serve all purposes of private possession. Of course, by becoming a hunter of rarities, a great deal of money may be spent, but that is a pursuit which, however respectable, is generally most enjoyable when the means are limited. When Charles Lamb screwed up his courage to give a few shillings for

an old dramatist, he got more pleasure out of his bargain than the rich man who would give as many hundreds. As some people have found rat-killing as amusing as tiger-shooting, so the poor collector gets as much fun out of his pursuits as his rival with a bottomless purse. A really good whist-player holds that very high stakes destroy the true interest of the game; and the various forms of curiosity-hunting, whether the objects be the old masters or rare books or china or autographs or pigeons, are about equally interesting. The more intellectual a man's tastes, the more he really cares for art or study, the less he will be interested, speaking generally, in these subsidiary amusements. Shakespeare can be studied just as well in the facsimile of the first folio as in the original; and all that the rich man gains in this sense is that he has not to make so many visits to the British Museum. When a man has as good a house as he cares to inhabit, as good wines and meats and cigars as he cares to consume, as many books as he can read and as many pictures as he can enjoy, as much hunting or fishing or travelling as he can find time for, and can see his friends as often and in as much comfort as he chooses, he will begin to find it rather troublesome to invent new gratifications. We assume that such a man is able to provide sufficiently for his family. Most people are philosophical in regard to their children, and can see very distinctly that it is a doubtful advantage to a young man to be born without the need of exerting himself. After all that can be said, it is plain when we are talking of our neighbors that the greatest of all securities for happiness, after the possession of a good constitution, is to have an absorbing pursuit. Any profession which rewards a man for exerting his faculties to the utmost is in the long run a source of the greatest pleasure in life. Whether a man is the best jockey, or the best lawyer, or the greatest writer in England, he has for the time an inestimable security against the possibility of being bored. Though we should all like to grow rich, few people would maintain that a man born to a fortune is on the average happier than a man who has a fortune to make, and is capable of making it. The fact is clear enough to make any reasonable man contented

who can start his children with a sufficient provision against poverty, though he may not be able to leave them large fortunes.

The question then is, for how much money these advantages may be obtained. The answer of course varies, and probably the figure suggested would become a little higher every year. One suggestion has been made, that the happiest of all conditions is to have ten thousand a year and to be supposed to have five. We fully agree that it is possible to be happy upon ten thousand a year; and indeed we are inclined to hope that many people get all the essentials of life upon less. It is a plausible doctrine, too, that it is desirable that your income should be underestimated. It is of course pleasant to get credit for liberality when you do not deserve it, and to feel that you are escaping demands which would be made if the truth were known. The general desire of human beings to be regarded as richer than they are seems to prove, however,

that most people dread the shame of poverty more than the accusation of meanness. If we ask what people actually desire, we must assume that one of the main pleasures of life is that of making a display of wealth. If we ask what they ought to desire as rational beings, we must say that a man should wish to be known for what he is. In fact, the pleasantest society is often to be found in small circles, where concealment is practically impossible, and where people have therefore tacitly agreed to a scale of expenditure in proportion to their means. The true answer to the question would therefore be found by inquiring what is the average income by which a man can command without trouble that social position for which he is best qualified by his tastes. If he has about twice that amount, and uses it to gratify any special tastes, instead of seeking for admission to a different sphere, he will probably be about as comfortable as money can make him.-Saturday Review.