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I have met with family circles in the New World as united and affectionate as those in the Old, not only in country districts, but in the metropolis itself; and in New England there is probably as much of what may be termed patriarchal life as anywhere in Europe. The public charities of New York are on a gigantic scale.

Far below rolled the white mist over the valleys of superstition, and above him towered the mountains. They had seemed low before; they were of an immeasurable height now, from crown to foundation surrounded by walls of rock, that rose tier above tier in mighty circles. Upon them played the eternal sunshine. He uttered a wild cry.

Overhead the wild scud flew fast, the stern Cape looked more solitary and grand, and the sea-fowl with discordant shrieks flew round and round, closing in the circles they were forming till they almost touched our masts. The ship struggled bravely onward on the starboard-tack, rapidly increasing her distance from the land, but making very little way to the westward.

Twenty circles became a hundred two hundred and more. Under Gray Wolf's and Kazan's feet the snow grew hard in the path they made. Under the old bull's widespread hoofs the snow was no longer white but red. A thousand times before this unseen tragedy of the wilderness had been enacted.

Their homes were so distant, and the circles in which they moved so distinct, as almost to preclude the means of ever hearing of each other's existence during the eleven following years, or, at least, to make it very wonderful to Sir Thomas that Mrs. Norris should ever have it in her power to tell them, as she now and then did, in an angry voice, that Fanny had got another child.

Then it seemed to her as if the sky must roll up like a scroll and the earth collapse into a handful of dust falling through space, for she knew that little Gargoyle of the "undressed mind" little Gargoyle, looking out of John Berber's trained eyes as out of windows of ground glass, was flitting like a shadow across her own intelligence, trying to tell her what things he had always known about life and death, and the myriads of worlds spinning back in their great circles to the Power which had set them spinning.

But you who accuse me of having lied, are you going to lie to him, to him?" Marsa became livid, and her eyes, hollow as those of a person sick to death, flamed in the black circles which surrounded them. "I have no answer to make to one who has no right to question me," she said.

Then he lived in an elegant mansion. Now one or two rooms on the upper floor of some tenement house constitute his habitation. He shrinks from meeting his old friends, well knowing that not one of them will recognize him, except to insult him with a scornful stare. Families are constantly disappearing from the social circles in which they have shone for a greater or less time.

The circles were steadily narrowing, though the man and the girl were working slowly and deliberately, really covering the ground by inches, so thorough was their search for clues of the supposed night visitors. No spot of the size of a hand escaped the keen scrutiny of one or the other of them.

Bitter enemies may meet calmly at the dinner table of a mutual friend, and I understand that, in the higher circles in which we do not care to move, a man may escort his divorced wife out to dinner, and, without bitterness, congratulate her upon her approaching marriage."