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Painfully, again, Juliet attained further knowledge of the world, in learning the danger of asking counsel; except of the candid and wise, who know how to modify it by circumstances, and who will listen to opposing representations.

Mrs. Hart, from the moment that Juliet declined to be guided wholly by her judgment, lost all interest in her young work-woman's distresses. "If people won't follow advice," she said, "'tis a sign they are not much to be pitied." Vainly Juliet affirmed, that reasons which she could not explain, put it out of her power to take any measure so decisive; that, far from fixing her own destiny for three years, she had no means to ascertain, or scarcely even to conjecture, what it might be in three days; or perhaps in three hours; although in the interval of suspense, she was not less an object for present humanity, from the incertitude of what either her wants or her abundance might be in