the comparison, which was foolish of him, poor fellow. "She said," he went on, "that she could trust her own judgment, and did not want anybody else's. That might have satisfied anybody, but it did not satisfy me. I wrote again, and begged her to do as I wished, telling her about the housekeeper. At last she wrote that she had done to please me what she never would have done for herself, and she said: 'I suppose you expect me to abide by whatever Miss Harris may say.' 66 Do you know that those words gave me a fright. I had never doubted till then that Miss Harris would give just the same character of me as she had done before, and also I had only thought of it as giving me more value to Miss Woodroffe. I got nervous after I heard she had really consulted the Sibyl, and two days later I received these." He turned over his pocket-book again and handed to me two papers, sinking back in his chair after he had done so with a gesture that said, "You have the catastrophe and its results before you." I opened one of the papers, and literally I opened it with trembling fingers. There was something tragical in poor John's gesture, and in the emptiness and silence of the house. My eyes fell upon a sheet of paper, half covered with a neat, legible handwriting, the words of which were much as follows: "This writing belongs to a person of singularly impulsive and eager temperament, easily carried away by the feeling of the moment; very uncertain and unreliable, sadly inconsistent, without fixed purpose or deliberate judgment; not wanting in ability, but only in the power to apply it usefully; careless of money, but scarcely to be called generous; not altogether free from vanity, his temper is very irritable and passionate. . ." There was more, but a sigh from Johnpoor John! the most faithful and generous of friends, and the most steady-going of mortals-made me drop the sheet and take up the other. This was a very short note: "DEAR MR. ELDER,You insisted that I should consult Miss Harris, and trust her verdict on your character rather than my own. What that is you will see by the enclosed, and I am sure you cannot wonder that I dare not marry the man described. I am sending back your presents and letters by next post. With most sincere wishes for your happiness, "Yours truly, "LOUISA WOODROFFE." "Oh, John!" I said, when I had read this, "but she could not have meant it." "She meant it so thoroughly that when I got to her mother's house in London, the very evening of the day I received it, they were both gone abroad, and I have not so much as seen her from that time to this." So that was why the dining-room door was never altered. ARTHUR MORRISON JI. ZIGZAG URSING BEAR is an adaptable creature, a climate, merely chang ing his coat a little to eat honey- when This, from a business point of view, is obviously absurd. If you can find somebody idiot enough to buy the skin first, and pay cash, why, take it, and let him do the catching. It will save a deal of trouble, and you will probably have a chance of selling the same skin again, after the other fellow's funeral. The bear is indeed a very respectable beast, as beasts go. And he certainly is respected in some quarters. Both the North American Indians and the Lapps reverence him too much even to mention his name in conversation; with them he is "the old man in the fur cloak" or "the destroyer." Indeed, it seems reasonable to feel a certain respect for an animal which can knock the top of your head off with a blow of his paw; but both the Indians and the Lapps carry their resp a little too far. To kill a bear and then humbly apologise to the dead body, as they do, is adding insult to injury, especially if you dine off the injured party immediately afterward. Neither is it likely to propitiate Bruin if a dozen men, while prodding him vigorously with a dozen spears, express their regret for the damage they are doing, and hope that he'll pardon the liberty. All this they do in sober earnest, and even go so far as to prefer a polite request that he won't hurt If he ever accede to this, it is probably because he is confused by the contemplation of such colossal "cheek." All this is galling enough, though otherwise intended, but con tumely reaches its climax when dinner comes on. It would be annoying enough to the shade of the departed gentleman in fur to hear that he made a capital joint, or the reverse; still, it is what might be expected. But this sort of thing they studiously refrain from saying. They talk with enthusiasm of the poor bear's high moral qualities -often inventing them for the occasion, it is to be feared-and, presumably talking at his ghost, tell each other that it was most considerate and indulgent of him to let them kill him so easily. Now this is worse than laying on insult with a trowel; it is piling it on with a shovel, and rubbing it in with a brick. Contact with man ruins the respectability of the bear. He gets dissipated and raffish, and appears in the dock at police-courts. He street. Even in the innocent old times, not be strictly correct for made a great ass of that bear. There was once a belief that S bears licked their cubs into shape. If there be the bears in my acquaintance came of very negligent mothers-or, perhaps, of mothers who tried the other sort of licking. They have strength, sagacity, stup lity, gloom, cheerfulness, teeth, hair, claws, position, magnitude, and big feet; but nothing at all like shape. This is why they are able to indulge in such a rich variety of atti |