woman in America, and I detest fast women." She replied: "And I am agreeably surprised in you, Mr. Thackeray; for I heard you were no gentleman."

Mrs. King is below the medium height, fair; brilliant, variable eyes, black and gray and blue in turn; hair dark, and worn banded across a brow like her father's, high and broad, rarely seen in a woman; lips never at rest, showing superbly white teeth; hands and feet perfect; arms, bust, and shoulders polished ivory, and yet withal not beautiful as a whole; slightly lisping accent; and dress so artistic and ultrafashionable that nature seemed buried in flowers.

Mrs. King despises foolish sentimentalism, and shows up human vice in all of her books. All of her characters are true to nature. Bertha St. Clair, who is one of the dramatis persona in "Sylvia's World," and also in "Gerald Gray's Wife," is an exquisite portraiture. In the latter the characters are, as we have mentioned, from life-the false Gerald Gray still breathes the air of Charleston. That piece of insipidity, or "skim-milk, soft Cissy Clare," is strikingly true to nature, as are pompous Mr. Clare, sturdy old Jacob Desborough, scheming Phillis, and the gallant Josselyn.

The transforming power of love, as displayed in the metamorphosis of plain Ruth Desborough to beautiful Ruth Grey, is very charmingly wrought out.

Mrs. King has published nothing since the close of the war; but shortly after the downfall of the Confederacy, she gave dramatic readings in various parts of the North, and is, we believe, now residing in Washington City.

A LOVERS' QUARREL.

There was not a more beautiful avenue of trees in all the world than that which led to the front entrance of Oaklevel. They were very old-they met overhead, and enlaced themselves with wreaths of moss; the sunlight came flickering through the branches, and fell stealthily and tremblingly upon the clean, smooth ground; little heaps of dead leaves lay here and there, scattered by each breath of the December breeze, and forming their tiny mounds in fresh places as the wind trundled them along.

On a fine, bright morning, some years since, two persons were slowly pacing up and down this grand, majestic walk. They were both young, and both were handsome. She was blonde, and he a dark, grave-looking man.

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"What do you call flirting? If I am to be serious, and answer your questions, and admit your reproofs and heed them, pray begin by answering me a little. Where and when do I flirt?"

"Everywhere, and at all times."

"Be more particular, if you please. Name, sir, name!"

"I am not jesting, Nelly. Yesterday, at that picnic, you talked in a whisper to John Ford, you wore Ned Laurens's flowers stuck in your beltribbon, you danced two waltzes with that idiot, Percy Forest, and you sat for a full hour tête à tête with Walter James, and then rode home with him. I wish he had broken his neck, — him!" and a low-muttered curse ended the catalogue.

"If he had broken his neck, very probably he would have cracked mine; so, thank you; and please, Harry, don't swear: it is such an ungentlemanly habit, I wonder that you should have it. And now for the list of my errors and crimes. The mysterious whisper to John Ford was to ask him if he would not invite Miss Ellis to dance; I had noticed that no one had yet done so. You gave me no flowers, although your sister's garden is full of them this week; so I very naturally wore Ned Laurens's galanterie, in the shape of half a dozen rosebuds. Percy Forest may be a goose, but he waltzes, certainly, with clever feet; one of those waltzes I had offered early in the day to you, and you said you preferred a polka. Walter James is an old friend of mine, and, for the matter of that, of yours too. We talked very soberly: I think that his most desperate speech was the original discovery that I have pretty blonde ringlets, and when he falls in love, it shall be with a woman who has curls like mine. You best know whether papa allows me to drive with you since our accident: my choice lay between a stuffy, stupid carriage, full of dull people, and a nice, breezy drive in an open wagon, with

a good, jolly creature like Walter, whom you and I know to be, despite his compliments to my Eve-like coloring, eperdument amoureaux of Mary Turner's dark beauty. Now, Harry, have you not been unreasonable?"

"How can I help being so, Nelly, darling, when I am kept in this state of misery?" answered Harry, whose frowning brow had gradually smoothed itself into a more placable expression. "What man on earth could patiently endure seeing the woman he adores free to be sought by every one-feeling himself bound to her, body and soul, and yet not being able to claim her in the slightest way-made to pass his life in solitary wretchedness because an old lady and gentleman are too selfish —"

Hush, hush, Harry! You are forgetting. I am very young; papa and mamma think me too young to bind myself by any engagement."

"It is not that. They choose to keep you, as long as they can, mouldering with themselves in this old house."

"Harry!"

"Or else it is I whom they dislike, and refuse to receive as a son. Too young? why, you are nineteen. It is an infamous shame!"

"I will not speak to you, if you go on in this way. You know just as well

as I do what their reasons are. My poor sister Emily made a love-match at eighteen, and died, broken-hearted, at twenty-three. Her husband was a violent, jealous man, who gave her neither peace nor valuable affection. He looked upon her as a pretty toy, petted her, and was raging if a gentleman spoke more than ten words by her side, so long as her beauty and novelty lasted. Her health failed, her delicate loveliness departed, and with these went his worthless passion. I was a mere child then- the last living blossom of a long garland of household flowers-when my father laid his beloved Emily in her early grave. I stood by his great chair that sad evening in my little black gown when he returned from the funeral, and he placed his hands upon my head and made a vow that never, with his consent, should his only remaining darling follow in the steps of the lost one. 'No man shall have her who has not proved himself worthy to win her. As Jacob served Laban shall her future husband serve for her, if it please God that she live and that she have suitors.' Day by day, year by year, he has but strengthened himself in this determination; and when, last spring, you applied to him for my hand, he told you frankly that if you had patience to wait, and were convinced of the strength of our mutual attachment, on my twenty-third birthday you might claim a Mrs. Harry Trevor from his fireside."

"But, Nelly, four years to wait! and all because poor Mrs. Vernon had weak lungs-forgive me, dearest Helen, dearest Helen!" But Helen walked on and away from him, with proper indignation.

With impatient strides he passed her, just as they reached the lawn which bordered the avenue and surrounded the house. Extending his arms to bar her passage, "Listen to me, my own dear Nelly," he pleaded. "I was wrong to say that; but you cannot understand, my angel, how furious and intractable I become when I think of those incalculable days between this time and the blessed moment when I shall be sure of you."

"If you are not sure of me now, you do not fancy that you will be any more so then, do you?" asked Helen, gravely; but she permitted him to lead her away from the stone steps that she was about mounting, and back to the quiet alley under the old oaks.

He drew her arm through his, gently stroking her gloved hand as it rested in his own.

"If there is no truth and belief between us to-day, there will be none then," Helen pursued. "I am, in the sight of heaven, by my own free will and wish, your affianced wife. All the priests on earth would not make me more so, in spirit, than I am now. But I respect my father's wishes and feelings; and you must do so too," she added, lifting her eyes with such a lovely look of tenderness that Harry, as he pressed her hand with renewed fervor, murmured a blessing in quite a different tone from the one which he had devoted to the now forgotten Walter James.

He glanced around, and was about to seal his happiness upon the dainty pink lips, smiling so sweetly and confidingly; but Helen, blushing and laughing, said: "Take care: papa is reading yesterday's paper at the left-hand

window of the dining-room; and I think, if one eye is deciding upon the political crisis, the other is directed this way."

watched, then!" exclaimed Trevor, passionately, all his short

lived good-humor again flown. "This is worse and worse."

Helen looked at her lover with a calm, searching expression in her blue eyes. "Perhaps papa is right. He has a terror of violent men, and he may like to see if you are always as mild as he sees you in his presence."

Trevor bit his lip and stamped his foot impatiently. Helen hummed a tune, and settled her belt-ribbon with one hand, while she played the notes she was murmuring on the young gentleman's coat sleeve with the other.

He let the mischievous fingers slide through his arm, and “thought it was going to rain, and he had better be thinking of his ride to the city.” Nelly looked up at the blue heavens, where not a speck of a cloud was visible, and gravely congratulated him on a weather-wisdom which was equally rare and incomprehensible.

"But your season, my dear Harry, is always April. Sunshine and storm succeed so rapidly, that you can never take in the unbroken calm of thisDecember, for instance. Beside, I thought you were to stay all night with us? I know mamma expects you to do so."

“I am very much obliged,” said Mr. Trevor, haughtily; "I have business in town."

"Clients? court sitting?" asked Nelly, innocently, and demurely lifting her pretty eyebrows.

"No. There is a party at Lou Wilson's, and I half promised to go. We are to try some new figures of the German."

"Indeed!" Nelly's eyes flashed, and the color stole up deeper to her cheek. “I won't detain you."

She bowed, and turned from him with a cold good-morning. Her heart was beating, and the tears were very near; but she managed to still the one, and send back the others, so as to say indifferently, over her shoulder: "Should you see Walter James, pray tell him that I shall be happy to learn that accompaniment by this evening; and, as there is a moon, (in spite of your storm,) he can ride out after business hours and practise the song. But, however, I won't trouble you; mamma is to send a servant to Mrs. James's some time to-day, and I will write a note."

"I think it will be useless. He is going to Miss Wilson's."

"Not if he can come here, I fancy," said the wilful little beauty, with a significant tone; and then, repeating her cool "Good-by-let us see you soon," she sauntered into the house, elaborately pausing to pick off some dead leaves from the geraniums that were sunning themselves on the broad steps by which she entered.

Thus parted two foolish children, one of whom had a moment before expressed the most overwhelming passion, and the other had avowed herself, "in the sight of heaven, his affianced wife!"

Min Boston, Mass., October 8th, 1794.

RS. GILMAN is the daughter of Samuel Howard, and was born

In 1819, Miss Howard married Samuel Gilman, who came to Charleston, S. C., where he was ordained pastor of the Unitarian Church, which pulpit he filled until his death in 1858.

In 1832, Mrs. Gilman commenced editing the "Rose-Bud," the pioneer juvenile newspaper of the United States. From this periodical she has printed at various times the following volumes:

Recollections of a New England Housekeeper.
Recollections of a Southern Matron.

Ruth Raymond; or, Love's Progress.
Poetry of Travelling in the United States.

Tales and Ballads.

Verses of a Lifetime.

Letters of Eliza Wilkinson during the invasion of Charleston. Also, several volumes for youth, collected into one volume, and published as "Mrs. Gilman's Gift-Book."

Mrs. Gilman's life has been a long and useful one; and of her writings can be truly said, "she has written not one line she would wish to blot." For nearly half a century Charleston has been her home; and her wish is to make her final resting-place in the cemetery adjoining the church of which her husband was pastor.

March 31st, 1871.

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