As my acquaintance with young ladies hitherto had been limited to those who had "no soul," I felt some difficulty at first in keeping up with the exalted tone of my fair companion, but by letting her take the lead for some time, I got to know more of the ground.

We went on tolerably together, every moment increasing my stock of technicals, which were all that was needed to sustain the conversation.

How often have I found the same plan succeed, whether discussing a question of law or medicine, with a learned professor of either! or, what is still more difficult, canvassing the merits of a preacher or a doctrine with a serious young lady, whose "blessed privileges" were at first a little puzzling to comprehend.
I so contrived it, too, that Miss Matilda should seem as much to be making a convert to her views as to have found a person capable of sympathizing with her; and thus, long before the little supper, with which it was the major's practice to regale his friends every evening, made its appearance, we had established a perfect understanding together,--a circumstance that, a bystander might have remarked, was productive of a more widely diffused satisfaction than I could have myself seen any just cause for.

Mr.Burton was also progressing, as the Yankees say, with the sister; Sparks had booked himself as purchaser of military stores enough to make the campaign of the whole globe; and we were thus all evidently fulfilling our various vocations, and affording perfect satisfaction to our entertainers.
Then came the spatch-cock, and the sandwiches, and the negus, which Fanny first mixed for papa, and subsequently, with some little pressing, for Mr.
Burton; Matilda the romantic assisted _me_; Sparks helped himself.

Then we laughed, and told stories; pressed Sparks to sing, which, as he declined, we only pressed the more.