“If I were only sure that fishes did not feel, I should not mind hooking them,” said a lad of tender heart.

Miss Ariana Huntingdon was convinced that men did not feel, and therefore had not the slightest scruple in taking captive as many as came within range of her fascinations.

Had the misanthropical little coquette been old, or ugly, the stronger sex would have risen in a body to expel her from the city, but being very young and very pretty, they seemed to love her all the better for her alledged heresy as to man’s supremacy.

“That is one of the most beautiful apparitions that I ever met,” said a young gentleman who caught a glimpse of our heroine upon a fashionable promenade, crowded with insipid faces, whose fair unmeaningness was made more conspicuous from being contrasted with the gayest of colors.

“Ashes of roses” would have been the only appropriate hue for some of these passÉ damsels, of whose bloom certainly but the cinders were remaining, on which the marks of their former beauty were faintly traced in flittering characters.

There was a peculiar freshness and individuality in Ariana’s appearance, arising from her clear, original intellect, which made her always noticed, even by those who did not admire the piquant style of her beauty. Then her dress, without trespassing upon the mode of the season, bore some tasteful addition, so unique, that it was at once surmised that she must be very distinguÉ to be allowed such independence.

“Madame Bonheurie has not a hat trimmed in that manner,” said a characterless parvenu, who could not have afforded even a ribbon without a pedigree.

The article of dress, thus criticised, was a hat of delicate rose-color, but, alas! instead of wearing the stiff top-knots of ribbon which were then in vogue, Ariana had arranged the trimming so as to drop upon one side, without hiding the swan-like throat of its petite wearer. Her mantle, too, though unexceptionable in the richness and color of the velvet, was but slightly trimmed, and its graceful sleeves were quite unlike the stiff armlets through which some fair ladies’ hands were peeping in unnatural constraint.

Ariana, while smiling sweetly on her acquaintances, so moderated her tokens of favor upon this particular day, that no one stepped to her side to offer their escort, for she was deep in meditation,

“Am I really anxious to be an old maid?” was the question she was revolving in her own mind, and every antiquated maiden whom she met seemed to weigh against the affirmative that an hour since she would have been ready to pronounce.

“Yes,” however, sprung to her lips as she entered the parlor of Professor Daley, or rather study, as it might more appropriately be named. All signs of feminine refinement were neutralised in this uncomfortable apartment by huge piles of books, placed where most convenient for that gentleman.

If Mrs. Daley flew into a passion on the subject, and declared that she had seldom a place where a guest could be seated, he took up another volume, and perhaps, laid the one he had been reading upon the only vacant chair.

“You are the rudest man in the world, Madison,” was Ariana’s involuntary exclamation, as her learned connection gave her a kind of chin bow when she entered the apartment, without appearing to favor her with a single glance.

“That is what I always tell him,” rejoined Jane, who seemed, as is the case with some one in most families, to have absorbed all the spirit intended amply to endow the whole; “read, read, from morning till night. I might as well have no husband.”

Like the boy under stoical tuition, if Mr. Daley had learned nothing else from philosophy, it had enabled him to meet reproach with perfect calmness. It is questionable, however, if that mode of meeting reproach is a virtue, which instead of turning away wrath, infuriates it beyond all bounds. Mr. Daley’s perfect indifference to the happiness of every living thing, was the alkali to the acid of Mrs. Daley’s character, and produced violent fermentation. How cold those blue eyes of his looked through the green spectacles worn to repair the effect of constant study by lamp-light! It would have been well if the carpet could have been defended from the effects of these nocturnal vigils, as many a spot was visible in spite of the constant wear which had reduced the once elastic Brussels to a floor-cloth consistency.

Home, to the man of science, was only a place where the torch of mind was to be re-lighted; his wife, a being who fed it with oil, and her house the mere laboratory used for those supplies of a physical nature which made the ethereal flame burn purer and brighter.

What a pity it is that all who are destined to play the part of cyphers have not a taste for nonentity! Mrs. Daley, as she often told her husband, who, however, had not once seemed to hear the remark, “never dreamed before her marriage that it would come to this.” To be sure he had been a different man as a lover, but it is one of the standing wonders of the world how the wise and great ever condescended to the foolishness of courting; yet philosophers in love are always lamentably absent, and being quite out of their element, flounder away more boisterously than any other kind of fish, but marriage puts them again at ease, and then their cold blood creeps on uninterrupted in its sluggish course.

“Old maid or not old maid,” again passed through Ariana’s mind as her eyes rested on Mr. Daley’s boots, which, in their turn, rested upon the marble mantelpiece.

“Literary men are I presume all just such bears, and men of business like Andrew.” Single-blessedness would have carried the day had not the most finical of her maiden acquaintance arisen to efface the images of the brothers-in-law.

“Do these old books make you happy, Madison Daley?” she asked, when her sister was quite exhausted with the relation of her grievances. The Professor had been caught looking up at the cessation of the sound of his wife’s tongue, which he seemed to have imagined was to be perpetual.

One cannot pretend to deafness as easily when they meet the eye of a questioner, and a cold “Yes,” fell from the thin lips of the philosopher. He instantly resumed reading a “Treatise upon the promotion of individual happiness, as the only certain way of enhancing national prosperity.”

It was a lucky thing for Ariana, that with her quick perception of character she had so strong a love for the ludicrous, for what otherwise might have aroused her indignation now only excited her mirth. The incongruity between Professor Daley’s philanthropic studies and his habitual selfishness, struck her as so droll that she burst into a merry peal of laughter. The astonished glance of the Professor at this sudden merriment said quite plainly, “Is the girl demented?” and Jane’s querulous voice, still more audibly,

“It is easy enough to laugh at other people’s misfortunes! I only wish that I may live to see you married, and yet as much alone and as dependent on your own exertions, as if you had no natural protector.”

Ariana knew by long experience that her sister considered Mr. Daley’s faults as her exclusive property, and wished others to speak of him always as if he were a model of a man. When she spoke in society herself of her learned husband, no one would have dreamed that she had discovered the feet of her idol to be of clay, but in tÊte-À-tÊtes she even insinuated to him that they were slightly cloven.

Ariana had a good share of mother wit, and knew very well the wisdom of exciting a counteracting passion when she had subjected herself to reproof by her open disrespect toward her learned brother-in-law.

“You told me, sister,” she said soothingly, “that you expected company, and my aid would be needed in preparing for their reception.”

All Mrs. Daley’s motions were sudden, and at this remark she started up, exclaiming, “There! I have not given half my orders in the kitchen, and I dare say that the children have put the dining-room all out of order while I have been talking here. Do go and see to them, while I tell Betty what linen to put on the bed in the spare room.”

One would have thought that the dining-room might have been sacred to eating and drinking, but the Professor had insisted on piling the surplus of his library in one corner of this cold, parlor-looking apartment. People have various ideas of comfort, but to Ariana’s eyes the disorder which her pretty little niece and nephew had caused was rather an improvement.

Archie had built a very respectable house out of the Encyclopedias, and a large stone inkstand, which luckily was corked, served very well, when turned upside down, for a parlor centre-table. A smaller one and an accompanying sand-box, from his mother’s escritoir, answered for ottomans, and upon them two table-napkins, with strings round their waists, to improve their figures, were sitting up, quite like ladies and gentlemen.

The bright faces of Archie and Etta wore a troubled expression, at the opening of the door, but it turned to one of unfeigned delight as they both scampered toward Ariana, exclaiming—“Oh, aunty, come and see our pretty baby-house. We have found out such a nice way of using pa’s tiresome old books.”

Like the cat transformed to a lady, who always showed her feline origin at the sight of a mouse, Ariana seemed always to return to childhood when in company with Archie and Etta. Mrs. Daley might as well have set a monkey to keep them out of mischief, for down dropped the moderator on the floor beside the baby-house, and commenced twisting the napkins into most ludicrous imitations of humanity. Etta finding that while her aunty was thus employed, she could get a nice chance at playing with her hair, slily drew out the comb and fell to “turling it” over her little fingers, while Archie clapped his hands and danced about in wild delight at the beauty of the napkin ladies and gentlemen—Hark! there was a footstep in the hall—no! two. The door opened and the Professor, with scarcely a glance at the occupants of the room, thrust into it a tall, fine-looking stranger, and merely saying, “My sister-in-law, Cousin Arthur,” retreated.

Ariana was so much amused at this strange introduction of the visiter, that she scarcely thought of her own disordered appearance.

“So, brother Madison has ejected you, sir, from his study at once,” she said smiling. “His way of making people completely at home is by turning them out of his own door. Do take a seat with us children, and my sister will be here presently.”

Arthur Grayson had a great respect for his cousin, the Professor, having never seen him in domestic life, and only knowing his high reputation among the scientific men of the day. He was ignorant of the reason why Ariana spoke in so disrespectful a tone of so near a connection, and it seemed a want of politeness.

“No beauty can atone for such rudeness,” he thought to himself, but replied courteously, “My cousin probably knew what society I should find most entertaining, and I am glad that he did not allow me to trespass upon his time.”

Before Ariana could answer this remark, Jane emerged from a staircase leading to the kitchen, with a bowl in her hand, exclaiming, “Do, Ariana, stir up this cake.”

In her surprise at the sight of the stranger, the bowl slipped from her hand and fell on the floor, scattering its yet fluid contents in every direction. Our pretty man-hater turned mischievously toward Arthur Grayson, to observe how he bore the bespattering of the very elegant suit of broadcloth in which his unexceptionable form was enveloped, but instead of betraying any marks of irritation, he said with perfect self-command and good-humor, “I presume that the dispenser of such good things can only be that Lady Bountiful, my Cousin Jane, of whose open-handed hospitality I have often heard.”

It could never have been said of Mrs. Daly that she was

And to have lost china and cake both together was quite too severe a trial of her patience.

Ariana immediately came to her relief, by saying to the guest very politely, “Will you walk into the study with me, sir? I assure you that Madison does not care how many people are there, so he is saved from the task of entertaining them.”

“It is all the fault of that selfish animal,” she added mentally. “What is the use of all the learning in the world if unmixed with a particle of common sense?”

——