My earliest recollections lead me back to a period when I found myself within a church. There was a rolling of rich music and a slow monotonous chanting which then filled me with surprise and admiration, but I have long since learnt the true important of such influences, and the attitudes of the worshippers are now taken by me for the outward semblance of inward emotions which are very generally non-existent. Be this as it may, I was engaged upon professional business connected with the plump white leg of a young lady of some fourteen years of age, the taste of whose delicious blood I well remember, and the flavour of whose-

But I am digressing.

Soon after commencing in a quiet and friendly way my little attentions, the young girl in common with the rest of the congregation rose to depart, and I, as a matter of course, determined to accompany her.

I am very sharp of sight as well as of hearing, and that is, how I saw a young gentleman slip a small folded piece of white paper into the young lady's pretty gloved hand, as she passed through the crowded porch. I had noticed the name Bella neatly worked upon the soft silk stocking which had at first attracted me, and I now saw that the same word appeared alone upon the outside of the billet- doux. She was with her Aunt, a tall, stately dame, with whom I did not care to get upon terms of intimacy.

Bella was a beauty-just fourteen-a perfect figure, and although so young, her soft bosom was already budding into those proportions which delight the other sex. Her face was charming in its frankness; her breath sweet as the perfumes of Arabia, and, as I have always said, her skin as soft as velvet.