an urgent moral necessity that is the hardest of all things to satisfy since it knows not its own object ah you mistake me said he at length with a gesture of nervous impatience either of the places you mention indeed might answer my purpose or more probably none of them i want my place my own place i my true place in the world my proper sphere my thing to do which nature intended me to perform when she fashioned me thus and which i have vainly sought all my lifetime whether it be a footman s duty or a king s is of consequence so it be naturally mine can you help me here i will enter your application answered the at the same time writing a few lines in his volume but to undertake such a business i tell you frankly is quite apart from the ground covered by my official duties ask for something specific and it may doubtless be for you on your compliance with the conditions but were i to go further i should have the whole population of the city upon my shoulders since far the greater proportion of them are more or less in your the intelligence office the sank into a fit of despondency passed out of the door without again lifting his eyes and if he died of the disappointment he was probably buried m the wrong tomb inasmuch as the of such people never deserts them and whether alive or dead they are invariably out of place almost immediately another foot was heard on the threshold a youth entered hastily and threw a glance around the office to ascertain whether the man of intelligence was alone he then approached close to the desk blushed like a maiden and seemed at a how to his business you come upon an affair of the heart said the official personage looking into him through his mysterious spectacles state it in as few words as may be you are right replied the youth have a heart to dispose of you seek an exchange said the foolish youth why not be contented with own because exclaimed the young man losing his embarrassment in a passionate glow because my heart me with an intolerable fire it me all day long with for i know not what and feverish and the pangs of a vague sorrow and it me in the night time with a when there is nothing to be feared i cannot endure it any longer it were wiser to throw away such a heart even if it brings me nothing in return very well said the man of office making an entry in his volume your affair will be easily acted this species of makes no from an old of my business and there is always a large of the article to select from here if i mistake not comes ao pretty fair as he spoke the door was gently and slowly thrust affording a glimpse of the slender fi ire of a young girl who as she timidly entered seemed to bring the light and cheerfulness of the outer atmosphere into the somewhat gloomy apartment we know not her errand there nor can we reveal whether the young man gave up his heart into her if so the arrangement was neither better nor worse than in ninety nine cases out of a hundred where the parallel of a similar age affections and the easy of characters not deeply conscious of themselves supply the place of any not always however was the agency of the passions and affections an office of so little trouble it happened rarely indeed in proportion to the cases came under an ordinary rule but still it did happen that a heart was occasionally brought hither of exquisite material so delicately and ao curiously wrought that no other heart could be found to match it it might almost be considered a tune in a worldly point of view to be the possessor of such a diamond of the purest water since in any probability it could only b exchanged for ail o or v bit of glass or at least a jewel of native richness but ill set or with fated or a vein ran through its central lustre to choose another i is which have thb k i the and sympathies ever be doomed to pour themselves into vessels and thus lavish their rich � ob ihe strange that the � deeper nature whether in man or woman while ever other delicate instinct should so often lack that most one of preserving itself from with what is of a kind sometimes it is true the fountain is kept pure by a wisdom within itself and into the light of heaven without � slain from the through which it had upward and sometimes even here on e� the with the pure and the inexhaustible is with the infinite but these miracles h he should claim the credit of them axe far beyond the scope of such a superficial agent in human affairs as the figure in the mysterious spectacles again the door was opened admitting the of the city with a fi into the office now entered a man of and downcast look it was such an aspect as if he had lost the veiy soul out of bis body and had traversed all the world over searching in the dust of the rs and along the shady and beneath the the forest and the sands of the sea shore in h� � pe to recover it again he had glance along the of the as he he also in the angle of the and upon the floor of the room da ly up to the man of intelligence he gazed the inscrutable spectacles which the latter wore as if the treasure might l� e hidden within his vol an old i have lost � he began and then 