SOUL ECHOES.

CHAPTER I.

"Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will

Which torture where they cannot kill."

BYRON.

MR. JOHN WETHERILL, head of the respectable firm of Wetherill Brothers, Ironmarket, Birmingham, sat enjoying his pipe, his paper, his slippers, and the society of his wife and children, with an air that bespoke him the monarch of all he surveyed. It was evening, and to all appearance what Longfellow celebrates as the "children's hour," for the young ones were monopolists in the conversation, and certain liberties with mamma's work-basket and papa's chair were ventured upon which one could not imagine to be tolerated at all hours of the day.

I do not know that I need to describe Mr. John Wetherill very particularly. It is enough to say that

B

he was a representative man, and that the class he represented was the dignified opulent one of the British manufacturer. He was, too, a man who had risen, and he did not think any the less of himself on that account; on the contrary, he was rather proud of it. If his pride in it made him a little hard on men who did not rise, that easily besetting sin might be regarded as a natural consequence of his unvarying success in life, and condoned like other respectable sins.

Mr. John Wetherill believed that the qualities which had advanced him step by step to his present position were those most worthy of the impress of the guineastamp, and the most essential of cultivation by any who, like himself, wanted to "get on." The dogmatism of his ideas was impressed upon every lineament of his John Bull face; but, in spite of it, he was a fine, benevolent, sensible-looking man.

His pride of character had led him to devote, in his young manhood, such hours to study as should compensate for the lack of early education, and he had read largely of such literature as tends to bring the mind into fellowship with the beautiful in literature, art, and science without the fatigue of acquisition. A correct eye for form and colour, a fine ear for music, a faculty for the reception of ideas, had rendered him appreciative of art, music, poetry, and philosophy, without his pos

sessing, in any sense of the word, an ideal nature. When we say appreciative, we use the word in a limited sense; for where Ideality was needed to glory over the page or the canvas, or to soften its too broad light; where Imagination was wanted to bear upon its light wings the truth-seeking faculty of reason-John Wetherill stopped short. He went no further, and his dogmatism led him to scorn that which had no claim upon his sympathy.

As for his lady, she was altogether a contrast to him. As great a contrast as the oak and sycamore growing side by side. Many people do not like the sycamore, and there were many-very many-who did not like Mrs. John Wetherill. It was whispered that her husband, her children, and all her dependents had a trying time of it through her whims and fretfulness. No student of human nature would, however, have passed her by without interest. The straight Greek features, the nervous eye, spoke of one whose fastidious taste and fine, sensitive organisation must suffer many a shock, perhaps constant friction, in this world of antagonistic elements. A great amount of moral fibre would be needed to balance so delicately-wrought a nature, and of this moral fibre there were no indications.

Now for the children; and only to find a key to the

peculiarities of the children, have we paused to consider the parents. They were, as might be expected, a curious compound. Fine creatures all of them; but with so many points of difference between them that they were always quarrelling. Yet they loved one another not a little, and a shrewd observer might have foretold that they would grow up exceedingly to admire one another, because their talents lay in so opposite a direction. But in the present elementary state of their mental and moral being they were constantly at war and were difficult to reconcile: for while one was refined and fastidious like the mother, another was rude and buoyant as had been Mr. John Wetherill himself ere he took to reading reviews and magazine articles, and aspired to be thought a gentlemen. While one lived pensively in the regions of thought and could bear no intrusion, another delighted in action and would have scattered any number of airy castles, or have disturbed even the concentrativeness of a Sir Isaac Newton by the perpetual darting hither and thither, the constant hum as of a busy insect, or the burst of uproarious laughter; as disturbing to dreams and fancies as a sudden gust of wind to a salver of rose leaves laid out to dry.

"Totty, you puss, bring me back that slipper. No! no hunt the slipper to-night," said Mr. Wetherill, “Let me enjoy my paper in peace. Now then, Hetty. Well,

when we get your cousin here, and after her Mrs. Dalgleish, I suppose we shall settle down, and you will

be called to order."

Then we'll fizz up while we can," said Hetty. "All well and good, but don't make me the

want to be quiet."

spoon. I

"I don't want Mrs. Dalgleish, but I'm impatient for cousin Mabel to come."

Why you'll quarrel with her, see if you don't.”

"No I shan't; she is an angel! so beautiful! her likeness shows," said Hetty, meditatively.

"A flesh and blood beauty, as Mr. Price would say,” exclaimed a boy on the sofa, with a short derisive laugh. "I've seen her likeness too."

He resumed his reading as if he had not spoken. He was intent on the "Recollections of Blaise Pascal." He had a set, resolute, irritable face. He looked as if he had suffered and had set his teeth in the suffering.

'Maurice, put down that book," said his mother. Shut it up, you shan't read any more to night. Do you want leeches on your temples again?"

"Oh, mamma, this is light reading, it does not hurt

me."

"Do as I tell you. I wonder you take the trouble to read a book you must know nearly by heart."

He laid back wearily, the book closed, but his finger