Phyllis of Philistia

and bring into her presence the Rev. George Holland, to plead his cause to her-to plead to

women, so to speak-would make her the happiest of womankind. Mr. Holland was rector of St. Chad's, Battenberg Square, and he was thought very highly of even by his own curates, who intoned all the commonplace, everyday prayers in the liturgy for him, leaving him to do all the high-class

a year or two afterward became Earl of Earlscourt from a very great misfortune. The facts of the case were these: Tommy Trebovoir, as he was then, had made up his mind to marry a lady whose piquant style of beauty made the tobacconist's shop where she served the most popular in town. By the exercise of a great deal of diplomacy and the expenditure of a little money, Mr. Holland brought about a match between her and quite another man-a man who was not even on a subsidiary path to a peerage, and w

of his acts suggested. Others said that the Rev. George Holland

st-known preacher (legitimate, not Dissenting) in London, and that, too, without annoying the church-wardens of St. Chad's by drawing crowds of undesirable listeners to crush their way into the proprieta

as great; but, as Lord Earlscourt was he

ansion House meeting to express indignation at

tion of Chinese who represented the city meeting held at Pekin in favor of local option in Eng

s Ayrton, and had asked her to

what he had already learned from the letter which he had received from her the day before; name

t to be very well adapted as a place of abode for a proper-minded young woman; in fact, she could not imagine any proper-minded young woman living under any other form of government than that which found acceptance in Philistia. She had no yearning to startle her neighbors. With a large number of young women, the idea that startling one's neighbors is a career

t, she could not but feel that if she were deserving of punishment,-she looked on expulsion from Philistia as the severest punishment that could be dealt out to her, for she was extremely patriotic,-there were a good many other young women, and women who were no longer young, who were equally cu

she to become the wife of such a clergyman as George Holland. She was not wise enough to be able to perceive that a woman marries a man not so much because she things highly of marriage-

; but she looked demurely down to her sacred books, feeling that all the other women were gazing at her in envy; and she felt that there was no pride in the though

were passionately attached to colors,-appearing like poppies once more, and looking very much the better for the change, too; and she felt that it was

ime in sober shades already. The days are precious in a world i

sed to congratulate her and to talk, the nice ones, of the great cleverness of George Holland

y the thing that was best worth having in the world! Once or twice she had fancied that it was at the point of being given to her. There had been certain thrilling passages between herself and two men,-an interval of a year between each,-and there had also been a kiss in an alcove designed by her dearest friend, Ella Linton, for the undoing of mankind, a place of softened lights and shadowy palms. It was her recollection of these incidents that had caused her to fumble with the blind cord when her father had been suggesting to her the disadvantages of inexperience in matters of the hea

ideas-all her previous aspirations-were mistaken. She began to wonder if this was the reality of love-this conviction that there was nothing in the whole world that s

th

certain cabinet minister in his irresponsible days, on a question which he had recently introduced. Her father was bitterly opposed to the most recent views of the minister, and was