control of the law, which makes your will or your promise of no effect while you are a minor. But I will give you no more instances now, my dear Evelyn, of your pride and selfsufficiency; these are enough to show you that I have been aware of that fatal weakness; and now I will try to cut a little off the amount of these demands and show your artificers that you are not to be a prey to them. I must say, however, that the mason does not seem to have made an overcharge.”

"Oh! I am glad of it," exclaimed Evelyn, in the midst of all her mortification; "I always thought him honest; he has such a good countenance; besides, he advised me to repair the old walls of the widow Green's house instead of building a new one so I know he must be trustworthy; though Mrs. Manvers said I ought not to have left all to himself in repairing Green's house as I wished."

"Well, my love, I am glad your skill in physiognomy has been so successful; I only wish it had saved you from the other troublesome vexations of this day."

"Thank you, papa: indeed they have come one after another like the misfortunes of Job; but, unfortunately, unlike his, they were all caused by my own faults. But at all events I am delighted that poor Mrs. Green and her family are so comfortable now!"

When they entered the library every one inquired the result of the visit to the widow Green's cottage; and Mabel, throwing her arms round her neck, said, "Dear Evelyn! I have been pitying you so much—suffering so many vexations at once, and particularly that your poor widow should see how much you were embarrassed on her account."

"Thank you, dear Mabel! She was so anxious to pour forth her blessings that she did not take notice of the remarks my father made to Mr. Hickey. As to myself I have learned so much prudence and caution to-day that I am afraid I shall become quite hard-hearted."

"No, no, Evelyn," said Mr. Desmond; "but you will, I trust, gradually learn just sufficient wisdom to enable you to say no, when you ought not to yield."

"Oh! yes, papa, I am sure she will," said Mabel affectionately; though when one has the will and the power, it is

not easy to resist the too tempting pleasure of giving; but when she becomes a little more firm towards her unreasonable petitioners, she will be very like that pretty vegetable ivory about which Gerald and I have just been reading."

"Too true, indeed," he replied laughing," for she said herself that she should become quite hard-hearted; you know the ivory-nut is hard enough to be turned and polished."

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Yes, Mr. Gerald," replied Mabel, "but you seem to orget that what appears like ivory was first a milky fluid, intended, as the description says, to nourish the young plant, and then gradually changes its nature, till it acquires the beauty and solidity of real ivory; when, in like manner, it may be turned into various shapes. So what I mean is that, without losing her sweetness, she will be as firm, solid, and polished as the ivory-nut, and, like it, easily worked to every useful purpose."

"Well, you have worked that out very well, Mabel; so she shall be our polished ivory-nut from henceforth," said Gerald.

"Yes, she has made out her case in a very workmanlike way, and you are all dear children," said Mr. Desmond, kissing the forehead of each.

"But all this time, my dear Mabel, I do not know to what nut you allude," said Evelyn, "though I do well understand the kindness of your endeavour to comfort me."

"Is it possible that you should never have seen any vegetable ivory in London! I will tell you what I have just read about it, and then I will show you a little box which my aunt sent me some time ago."

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But, Mabel, do you mean that ivory is really found on a tree?

"I do indeed. A nut, about the size of a hen's egg, is produced by a species of palm which grows in Peru and New Grenada, and which is called Tagna,* or Cabeza de Negro (negro's head), by the natives. The nut is of a rough and clumsy shape, and brown outside; but when it has become solid, and that you cut through it with a saw, the inside appears white and smooth, like a lump of nice ivory."

* Phytolephas macrocarpa.

instead of the shell, like that of plums and peaches and other stone-fruit; and of nice white ivory too!

"The pure white of the kernel is peculiar to that species of palm," said Mrs. Manvers; "but there is another palm which supplies materials to the turner."

"But I do not understand of what use that hard part of the nut can be to the seed," said Evelyn.

"That part of the kernel which is so like ivory,” replied Mrs. Manvers, "is called the albumen; which is, you know, the nutritious substance that surrounds the embryo plant, and is intended as food for it when it first begins to grow. This albumen is of very different consistence in the seeds of different plants: in corn it hardens into the substance which is ground into flour; it is the spicy part of the nutmeg; and you have eaten it in the fleshy part of the cocoa-nut. The same portion of the fruit becomes quite hard in other palms alsothe date, for instance-but not white; and also the African doum-palm, of which, at Thebes, in Egypt, the turners make beads for rosaries, from its remarkably hard and stony kernels."

"But," said Mr. Desmond, "I must make you acquainted, Evelyn, with a very curious circumstance in the economy of the ivory-palm. When I last visited Kew I had the pleasure of seeing in the magnificent hot-house there several young plants of it in different stages of their growth. The active and enlightened philosopher at the head of that establishment had received a box full of the nuts from a friend at Bogotà de Fè, the capital of New Grenada; and having sown them at different depths, he was surprised at finding the nuts all appearing in a certain time on the surface of the earth in the box; and in a few days they had risen even above it by means of a strong radicle which they had thrown downwards. I myself saw some of these nuts on the surface of the pots, and others standing two or three inches in the air, each supported on its strong radicle; while a beautiful little plumula, with delicate pinnated leaves, had shot upwards. Those plants which had been earliest sown, and were in a more advanced state, had exchanged their pretty pinnated leaves for long

single leaves, sheathing the stem, as in other palms; and with those leaves people cover their houses in the country it comes from."

Mabel asked what became of the nut when the plant grew up, and whether it always continued attached to the young tree. To which her father replied, that it did continue there till its office had been so completely fulfilled that the solid bony matter within had been all absorbed, and then the nut falls empty and useless to the ground.

"It continues for a good while attached to the stem, I suppose, just as the acorn does to the young oak?"

"Yes," said Mr. Desmond; "but how different the destiny of the two! The one to be turned into ornaments for a lady's dressing-table or workbox-the other producing the stately oak, one day to form the ribs of some huge man-of-war or industrious merchant-ship, either to defend our shores and our homes from aggression, or to bear her cargoes to distant lands, and to convey the blessings of commerce, knowledge, and civilization throughout the world."

6

"You compared yourself to Job yesterday (your day of misfortunes'), Evelyn, which reminded me that, in your search for the most ancient prophecies relative to our Lord, you seem to have overlooked the predictions to be found in the book of Job, certainly some of the most ancient."

"But then, papa, I have been told that Job was an imaginary character."

"Some critics," replied Mr. Desmond, "have represented his book as a dramatic and fictitious composition; but there is good reason to believe that there was such a person, who did undergo severe trials. The prophet Ezekiel ranks Job with Noah and Daniel, and in such a manner as to imply that they were three of the most pious of men; the apostle James records his patience; and surely neither of those inspired writers would have cited him as an example had the book or the existence of Job been questionable. Besides, the early admission of the book of Job into the sacred canon is, I think, another very strong proof of its veracity."

"The geographical precision, too," said Mrs. Manvers, "with which the situation of his residence and that of his friends is described, seems, as some writers have remarked, intended to show the certainty of the history."

"Yes, indeed," said Mr. Desmond, "it is a strong concomitant proof of the existence of such a person. The next question is, of course, at what time did Job live? But that may not, perhaps, be as easily answered. However, the

Bible chronology dates the trials of Job twenty-nine years before the Israelites quitted Egypt; and several circumstances have been pointed out by learned men to prove that the time of his misfortunes must have been as early as that period, or perhaps even still more remote."