All things are double, and He hath made nothing imperfect.
Ecclesiasticus xliii. 24.
Late at night of a Saturday the milliner's girl shuts up the close-pent shop, and, through such darkness as the city allows, walks to her home in the narrow street. All day long, and all the week, she has been busy with bonnets and caps, crowns and fronts, capes and lace and ribbons; with gauze, muslin, tape, wire bows, and artificial flowers; with fits and misfits, bearings and unbearings, fixings and unfixings, tryings-on and takings-off; with looking in the glass at "nods, becks, and wreathed smiles;"—till now the poor girl's head swims with the heat of the day and the bad air of the shop, and her heart aches with weary loneliness. Now, thankful for the coming Sunday, she sits down in her little back chamber, opens the blinds, and looks out at the western sky, taking a long breath. Over her head, what a spectacle! In the western horizon there yet linger some streaks of day; a pale red hue, toned up with a little saffron-colored light, lies over Brighton and Cambridge and Watertown,—a reflection, it seems, from the great sea of day, which tosses there far below the horizon, where the people are yet at their work; for with them it is still the hot, bustling Saturday afternoon, and the welcome night has not yet reached them, putting her children to bed with her cradle-hymn:—
