“Where are Frank and Harry?” asked Mr. Lennox, as
the family assembled at breakfast.

“I heard them, last night,” replied Mary, “agree to go
over to Brooklyn early in the morning, and practise with
the pistol.”

“Ah! here they are,” exclaimed Mr. Lennox. “Come,
young gentlemen, you're just in time.”

“How many people have you shot with those horrid
things?” said Mrs. Lennox.

“Nobody but our mark,” answered Frank, a young lieutenant
just graduated from West Point, “and I think we
rather touched that once or twice—didn't we, Harry?”

“Which is the best marksman?” asked Mr. Lennox.

“I am,” said Harry, “but Frank comes on famously.”

“What are you going to do on your birthday, Harry?”
inquired his father. “It's next Thursday, isn't it? and
you're one-and-twenty, I believe.”

“I haven't formed any projects, sir,” replied Harry.

“I hope you're going to give us some sort of a celebration
on the occasion, father?” said Mary, laughing.

“I think birthdays ought to be kept in a quiet way,” said
Mrs. Lennox, “and young people should make their first
entrance into the world with reflection and gravity.”

“Nonsense!” exclaimed Mr. Lennox: “why gravity?
There are occasions enough for gravity when we can't
help it. On the contrary, let's have some friends to dinner,
and in the evening a ball.”

“I was going to propose a trip to Rose Hill,” said Mary.
“We might ask the Eltons, and one or two others, and
make a pleasant family party—a sort of picnic.”

“What say you, Harry?” asked his father. “You are
the hero of the day.”

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“Upon my word, sir,” said Harry, “I have not even
formed a wish on the subject.”

“If there is going to be a celebration,” said Frank, “I
prefer Rose Hill.”

“So I thought,” remarked Mary, laughing.

“So should I,” said Harry. “At a ball, I suppose, I
should be metamorphosed into a sort of lion, and I fear I
should feel more like Bottom the weaver than the noble
animal himself.”

“That's right, Harry,” observed his mother; “be modest,
my son.”

“But, now I think of it,” said Mr. Lennox, “I can't very
well leave town Thursday: I have an engagement.”

“If you mean the affair of Brinsley, I can attend to that,
I think,” said Harry.

“And you,” replied his mother, “how can you then join
the party?”

“Oh, I don't mind. I shall rather prefer to stay in town.”

“Well, that is one way to celebrate one's birthday, to be
sure,” said Frank, laughing.

“Harry is so odd,” exclaimed Mary. “I believe he really
dislikes to be with his own family. He's all day at his
business, and all the evening at political meetings, or clubs,
or the theatre, or heaven knows where! He don't dine at
home half the time, and when he does—”

“Young men will be young men,” said his father; “nothing
is gained by curbing and advising them; though, to
say truth, Harry, you have been rather erratic in your way
of life lately.”

“I'm sorry you think so, sir; but you often say men want
not only severe application, but a knowledge of life.”

“Certainly, my dear boy, certainly; you are quite your
own master. As to Rose Hill, we shall be obliged to give
that up for Thursday. I'm sorry, too, with this magnificent
weather. But I'll make another proposition, which I hope
won't shock your mother's sense of gravity. We'll have no
celebration at all, but a quiet family dinner, with your uncle
and aunt Henderson, and go in the evening to the theatre
and hear Horn.”

“I should like that better,” said Mrs. Lennox.

“And I,” echoed all.

“Good; it is so decreed, then,” said Lennox.

“And, father,” said Mary, “we'll ask the Eltons to dine,
and take them with us. What say you, Frank?”

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“Who! I?” exclaimed Frank. “Oh, certainly. Anything
for a quiet house—anybody. It's quite the same to
me.”

“Oh, you hypocrite!” said Mary. “You've no preference
for Mrs. Elton! certainly not!”

“What do you mean by that, Mary?” asked Frank.

“And why not Mrs. Elton?” said Mr. Lennox. “She is
a very charming lady; a gay, amiable, excellent, and very
handsome woman; a little eloquent, perhaps; but I like her
because she has a heart. Mrs. Elton is one of my beauties,
although she is fifty.”

“Why, so are you fifty, father,” said Mary, laughing,
“for the matter of that.”

“Don't mention it, I beg,” cried Mr. Lennox. “I don't
believe it. It's too ridiculous! Why, I don't feel a bit
older than I did when your too susceptible mamma first fell
furiously in love with me.”

“Nonsense! Nor a bit wiser!” said his wife.

“Wisdom? A fig for wisdom! What is it but caution
and cunning, after all? What do we live for? Happiness.
Thank Heaven, I've enjoyed it, and I shall leave it within
the reach of my children. Let the unfortunate study wisdom;
but for me, true wisdom is to enjoy. And yet fifty!
I really can't believe it.”

“It is nevertheless so,” said Mrs. Lennox. “And there's
Frank, a man, with a pair of, I must say, very impudentlooking
whiskers, and a commission in the army. Here's
Mary, a tall woman already; and as for Harry, he's actually
growing old and serious. Ah, my children! you little
know how short life is to those who look back.”

“Very true!” observed Lennox, intending to be grave,
but failing in such a droll way as to make every one smile.
“It seems but yesterday when I used to think a man of
fifty a regular old codger, done with life, gouty, with a
cracked voice, gold-headed cane, and a brown wig; and
yet now, although arrived fairly at that awful age, I still
feel myself the same wild, good-for-nothing young dog as
ever.”

“And I don't see any particular difference in you either,”
said his wife, looking at him half reproachfully, half affectionately,
“only you've grown rather younger and wilder.”

“To be sure I have,” replied he; “and why? Because
I have not troubled myself with wisdom! I've never

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fretted and moped about what couldn't be helped. I never
thought an hour in my life; never studied more than was
just necessary for the morrow. I've taken the world as it
came, and not striven for what it did not give me. Do you
suppose that, had I pleased, I could not have been as great
as any of them? Couldn't I have shone at the bar, and
shaken the Senate? To be sure I could. But I disdained
it. Fortune made me rich, and my own good sense kept
me happy; and, if that is not the true wisdom, I should like
to know what is.”

“To do you justice,” said Mrs. Lennox, with a smile,
“when you came to visit me—let me see! five-and-twenty
years ago—you certainly were much graver and more sensible
than you are now. I never saw such a gentle, low-spoken,
modest person. If I could have known what a
hair-brained young madeap you would turn out at fifty, I
shouldn't have had you!”

This was received with renewed laughter by the happy
family circle.

“And how they have gone, those five-and-twenty years!”
added Mrs. Lennox. “And I wonder where we shall all
be five-and-twenty years hence.”

“Be? why here,” replied Mr. Lennox; “a little changed
or so, but just here, Mary, looking very much what you are
now. Frank commander-in-chief, with his eyebrows and
whiskers a little more bushy (if possible), and Harry a
senator, or Secretary of State, perhaps, for he hasn't unfolded
yet any actual designs on the presidential chair.”

“How can you speak so lightly of such solemn things?”
said Mrs. Lennox. “How can you close your eyes to the
possibility of a very different picture?”

“I tell you what, madam,” said her husband, gayly, “I'll
thank you to give us none of your wisdom. If you choose
to go, why that's your affair: I don't; on the contrary, I
mean to stay, and I don't think I need despair of providing
myself with another helpmate. I know twenty fine women
at this moment who would take me, and say `Thank you,
sir!' ”

“I haven't the slightest doubt of it,” replied his wife,
laughing at a reckless good-humour, to which she was too
well accustomed to misunderstand it, and looking at him
with an admiration which the five-and-twenty years aforesaid,
whatever other revolutions they might have effected,
had not changed.

[figure description] Page 009.[end figure description]

“Nor I,” said he, elevating his chin a little, throwing
back his shoulders into something of an attitude, and with
a glance into a large mirror opposite, which was intended
to pass for affectation, but in which, nevertheless, was no
want of a little real vanity. “I think I'm tolerably well
preserved! Hair—a touch of gray, perhaps; complexion—
a little richer than falls to the lot of inexperienced youth;
a line or two in the face, here and there, only visible in the
daylight; and, in fact, altogether—”

“Pray take a warm cake, sir,” interrupted Harry, laughing.

To say the truth, Mr. Lennox was a very handsome man.
His once dark hair was not the less luxuriant or becomingly
disposed, from the very general and decided change of
colour which he was pleased to denominate a “touch of
gray.” His complexion showed the natural effect of a long
course of good living, in a gentlemanly ruddiness which
scarcely detracted from his good looks. His person was
tall, well formed, and dignified; his voice manly and pleasing,
his eyes fine, and his manners particularly fascinating.
In short, he was one of those persons whose appearance
and address remind you of a duke or a prince, before you
have time to reflect that dukes and princes are, by nature,
no handsomer than other men. The benevolence, good
humour, and esprit of his character discovered themselves
in all he did and said, and the sort of thoughtlessness, which
might appear startling in any other man of his age, threw
around him only an air of originality.

“To come back to Mrs. Elton, however,” said he, while
he arranged upon his plate, and duly provided with pepper
and salt, a piece of fresh, boiled shad (an exquisite delicacy,
peculiar, we believe, to the United States, and some of
the rivers of Spain), “if I should be under the necessity of
seeking a new helpmate, which, nevertheless, I hope won't
be the case, Katy my dear, it wouldn't be the old lady I
should make up to, by any manner of means. She has
rather too redundant a flow of conversation for my quiet
and retiring disposition. I should carry the war into another
quarter.”

“And, pray, who would it be, father?” inquired Mary.
“Whom would you give me for a second mamma?”

“Why, that little witch Fanny, to be sure.”

Mary and her mother here interchanged glances, and

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laughed with a significance which appeared, as Othello
says, to “mean something.”

“What are you laughing at, miss?” demanded her father.

“Oh, nothing, sir!” answered Mary, laughing still more.

“Come, now, I insist upon knowing.”

“Why, only,” said Mrs. Lennox, “if you have any serious
intentions that way, your pride may have a fall.”

“What do you mean?”

“You stand some chance of being rather—rather—”

“Rather what?”

“Rather cut out, father,” said Mary.

“What! Fanny Elton?” exclaimed Mr. Lennox, evidently
surprised. “Is it possible? And who is the fellow,
pray?”

A glance, full of good-natured mischief, which Mary cast
towards Frank, appeared to throw some light on the mystery.
Frank returned it with a look of great indiguation,
but, at the same time, coloured obviously.

“What! the lieutenant?” cried Mr. Lennox. “What,
sir! you have had the audacity to—to—hey, sir?”

“It's the most absurd thing possible,” said Frank.
“Mary is always full of nonsensical ideas.”

“You need not look so angry,” said Mrs. Lennox.
“There's nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Ashamed?” repeated Frank, with a certain dignity,
rather thrown away, however, upon the company, “I'm not
ashamed; but I think Mary might devise more profitable
occupation than—than endeavouring to discover facts, and
circulating reports of things which—which do not exist.”

“Hoity toity! what a grand speech!” rejoined his father.

“Your indignation,” said Mrs. Lennox, “reminds me,
Frank, of the first time you ever put on a long-tailed coat.
Mary had been teazing him all day about it, for she is a
shameful teaze, and at last capped the climax by speaking
of it to some ladies who were paying me a visit. I shall
never forget how Frank drew himself up, in his grand way,
and said, `Mary's a mere child, and is always endeavouring
to attract attention to every passing circumstance!'
Poor Frank!”

“Frank's famous for making memorable speeches,” said
Mary, while all were laughing heartily except the object
of the merriment. “Do you remember what he once told
me about reading history? I had asked him some question

[figure description] Page 011.[end figure description]

concerning one of the personages in Hume, whom he could
not remember till I related several events of his life.
`Oh,' said he, `when I read history, I always skip the
names and dates!' ”

“I hope you have not skipped Miss Elton's name,” said
his father, “and the date of your first meeting? Hey! you
young dog?”

“Upon my word, it's quite ridiculous,” replied Frank,
amid the general smiles which these youthful anecdotes
had provoked; “I'm sure I might skip Miss Elton herself
altogether, for all the truth there is in Mary's accusation.
She may be a very decent sort of girl—I've no doubt she
is; but as for—in respect to—so far from there being any
danger of—”

“Hold your tongue, sir!” cried his father. “How dare
you have the impertinence to speak in that way of the loveliest
little being that ever grew off a rosebush? If that
young lady, sir, has deigned to honour you with an instant's
attention—if you've received so much as an accidental look
from her, and not gone crazy, you young scoundrel, you're
no son of mine.”

“You're rather hard upon Frank,” said Harry. “He
cannot publicly acknowledge a hope without also intimating
that such a hope has some foundation. Frank is not
only not one of those who would not boast of favours
not received, but he would even not boast of favours received.”

“Well, really, Harry,” said his mother, laughing heartily,
“it seems to me you are almost as bad as Frank with your
speeches. You are not in love too, I hope?”

“Favours! received and not received!” said Mr. Lennox.
“Why, what's all this? Are you such a coxcomb,”
addressing Frank, “as to suppose that young lady fancies
you worthy of the least notice?”

“No; and that's what I've been trying to say. Nothing
whatever has passed between Miss Elton and myself
which—that in the least—”

He coloured again.

“Come, come!” said Mrs. Lennox. “I won't have you
all on Frank in this way. Hand you father the cakes, and
let us leave the things of to-morrow unto to-morrow.”

“The lucky young rascal!” muttered his father; “and
ashamed of it!”

[figure description] Page 012.[end figure description]

“Really, sir,” said Frank, with something more of emphasis
than became the relation between him and the person
to whom he spoke, “as this is a discussion not altogether
agreeable to me, and as I have quite finished my
breakfast, I must beg leave to withdraw.”

He rose from the table and was leaving the room, when
his father called him back.

“Here, sir! Master Frank! Lieutenant Lennox! one
thing let me say to you!”

“What is it?”

“If you think the attentions of this young lady importunate,
had I not better forbid her the house? Ha! ha! ha!”

The door was closed with a decision which a good observer
might have remarked above the merry laughter occasioned
by the sally of Mr. Lennox.

“Poor, dear Frank!” remarked Mrs. Lennox. “You
really press him too far.”

“I wish all my children,” said Mr. Lennox, “to be able
to stand jesting good naturedly, and to learn the art of constantly
governing their temper. Frank is quick as lightning.”

“But it's soon over,” replied his mother. “Go after
him, Harry, and soothe him. This matter is, I fear, too true
for jesting.”

Harry rose, and followed his brother out of the room.

“The young dog!” said Mr. Lennox, “what an actor he
would make! Did you ever see such a splendid countenance!
such haughtiness! and to me, too! Our names will
live hereafter, Kate, in those two boys. I have frittered
away my life in peaceful pleasures. Instead of seeking
power and fame, I have confined myself to a narrow circle,
without influence, without a name. But if men want to
know me hereafter, let them look at my sons. Is Frank
really attached to Fanny Elton, though?”

“Certainly,” said Mary; “I have long seen it. They
love each other passionately.”

“I have sometimes half thought,” said Mrs. Lennox,
“that Harry—”

“Oh no! mother, not at all! He never goes near her.
I think, on the contrary, they are perfectly indifferent to
each other.”

“I confess,” said Mrs. Lennox, “I should like no one
so well for a daughter-in-law as Fanny Elton.”

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