CHAPTER XXIX.

ROWLAND THURSTON'S STORY.

AM enabled to give Rowland Thurston's story in his own words, for

he told it to me, and to an eminent man of letters, a great writer of fiction, whom I will call "Sir Aubrey." We had been talking about the marriages of some of our friends, and had made the not unusual remark, "what a

strange thing love is." Sir Aubrey, too, had said, that frequent as were the mistakes made in this matter of marriage, it was still a satisfaction to him to think that by far the greater number of marriages in England were love marriages, at any rate on one side or the other, and mostly on both sides; and that marriage was not

yet with us made a matter of mere barter and family arrangement.

We had all along treated Mr. Thurston as if he were a man who knew nothing about this subject; and we almost apologized for talking about it before him. We had been speaking of a novel which had been written by Sir Aubrey in his young days, and had been discussing the conduct of the hero and heroine, when Mr. Thurston interrupted us.

I will now give the conversation that ensued in the form of a conversation, as it actually occurred.

THURSTON. And so you say, or at any rate you seem to think, that it is impossible for me to understand, or at least to sympathize with, the loves of Sir Aubrey's hero and heroine. Ah me! I wish I did not understand them quite so well as I do.

Do you recollect, Sir Aubrey, in one of those books of yours, which exercise a strange fascination over all young people, and indeed, over most elderly ones too, you said, "There is for

many a man a spot in some quiet churchyard, which is ineffably dear to him, as underneath it lies his first love?" I do not think I quote the words accurately, but my attempt at quotation may remind you of them; and the passage in which they occur is the one which affected me more than anything you have written.

SIR AUBREY. Other men have told me the same thing. I am proud to hear that anything I have ever written should have affected you, Mr. Thurston.

MYSELF. But tell us now, Thurston, how it happened to affect you so much: a love story is always interesting. Not that I ever gave you credit for having one to tell.

THURSTON. Mine is utterly commonplace, not being one of those dexterous things which Sir Aubrey weaves out of his imagination, and which keep one in a state of uncertainty and tribulation until the end of the third volume.

SIR AUBREY. Every love story must. be
There must be thousands which

commonplace.

resemble it.

THURSTON. I am not sure of that. On the contrary, I think that each love story is a new life-drama, such as the world has never seen But what I mean is, that my

acted before.

story has no perilous adventures or strange surprises; but I must say, that I think the actors in it were not altogether common personages; at least I know that one of them was not.

Before beginning my story, I must make one or two remarks.

I suppose, as you are observant persons, you must have observed that there is more beauty to be met with in omnibuses than anywhere else? MYSELF. I agree with you, Thurston. tiful respectability travels in omnibuses.

Beau

The

female part of our aristocracy is not excessively beautiful. They are pre-eminent in gracefulness, but it is in the middle classes that there is most beauty, and perhaps most of all in the lower strata of these classes.

THURSTON. Good! Well, then, do you know anything about wood engraving?

SIR AUBREY. Not much.

THURSTON. The artist makes the design for the engraving. Afterwards he transfers it to a wooden block, or, if he is a practised hand, he makes his design upon the block itself. Then there comes the cutter-out, the person who cuts away all that part of the wood which has not upon it the dark lines of the original artist. If the graving tool should slip, and should cut away a bit of the surface of the block which is to remain, then a fresh piece of wood has to be inserted into the block; and all the work, so far as the new surface is concerned, has to be gone over again. This is very delicate work: it is often entrusted to women. You understand something of the work now, don't you?

MYSELF. Yes.

THURSTON. I will now proceed with my story. I was a very poor man when I was young. You two, I dare say, remember me as a sizar at Trinity. I did not get a fellowship. My reading was too discursive for that; and when I left Cambridge, I went to study for the bar. My father, a poor clergyman, had the greatest difficulty in furnishing me even with the scantiest means of support