stove, whose smoke - pipe rambles away along the ceiling to one wall or another. Lithographed Bible pictures are tacked on the wall behind the pulpit, and there is sometimes a melodeon or parlor-organ, though this is a rare luxury. From the ceiling, between the doors, dangles a rope used for ringing a small bell on the roof. Often the only notice the people scattered about the neighborhood have of an impending service is given by a few strokes of the church-house bell. The preacher gives out the hymns, and the women start the singing. He prays and preaches, and while he preaches the men go in and out, meeting one another outside to swap knives, to gossip, or to drive a bargain. In warm weather there is a constant movement of men going to and from the table, on which there always stands a pitcher of springwater and a glass. Babies that are able to do so toddle up and down the aisles, walk upon the pulpit platform, and sit down there to play.

The girls are often married at thirteen. Marriages at fourteen or fifteen are very common, and a girl of twenty is considered an old maid and ineligible if she has younger sisters. What I have seen of the girls and whatever I have heard of them and their mothers has roused my pity. The oldest daughter in one of these always large mountain families is almost certain to begin her life of drudging while very young, and as the women are all drudges after marriage and are married in childhood, drudging is their lot until they die.

They do all the work of cabin and farm, excepting during the few days at harvest-time, when the men help to garner the crops. They bear very many children; they cook, wash, mend, weave, knit, plough, hoe, weed, milk the cows, and do practically all else that is to be done. The men loaf about on horseback along the roads, visit their neighbors, the store, and the nearest village, and have as good and easy a time as they know how.

OHE came to see me, looking as she stood in the door fit "matter for a May morning." Through the open window I could watch the blossoms covering the cherry-trees and hear the twitter of the birds, but something of the very spirit of spring seemed to enter with her. She came in hurriedly and then paused, advancing only with lagging step, so that I understood that although she had been carried so far by the strength of her resolution, her courage was begin ning to give out.

"Oh, Miss Selwyn!" she exclaimed. I tried to make myself look as amiable as possible, but it is difficult to wreathe with ingratiating smiles a countenance of marked regularity of feature, to which time has added a somewhat severe expression, tightly drawn-back gray hair, and spectacles.

obliged to wait for the shortest time. At length I finished the few lines, rang for a messenger, and turning to her, looked at her propitiatingly.

"It's about Harry," she said.

Of course it was about Harry. It is always about "Harry," but generally she does not introduce the subject with such outspoken frankness. She begins with something apparently very far away from that interesting young man, and works by guileful transitions round to the subject about which she has really come to talk to me. The last time she quite deceived me. She began her visit by announcing that she thought it was wrong that our song-birds should be slaughtered to supply the trimmings for our hats, and asked me to join a society for the discouragement of such wanton destrucBut within five minutes we were

tion.

I explained that for once there was no one and nothing requiring attention; that it was not necessary for me either to get a cooking-stove out of pawn or a husband out of the penitentiary; that there had not been any new difficulty either at the hospital or the "School"; that as the Common Council was not in session that day, I was not obliged to be present at its meeting to speak in regard to a system of drainage which I was determined to have introduced in the lower part of the town-that, in short, I had a period of comparative leisure, since I did not have to start for All Hail Hall, where there was to be a "Mothers' Meeting," for half an hour; though at that point I had to beg her to wait a moment while I wrote a note ordering some needed supplies about which I had nearly forgotten. She sat down restlessly. I could see that she considered the business upon which she had come the most important in the world, and that she resented a little being VOL. CVI.-No. 637.-6

I don't quite know what to do.”

"And

In a moment of thoughtlessness I asked her if he had displeased her in any way, and was at once brought to a realization of my outrageous impropriety in imagining such a thing by the surprised and pained look in her face.

"Harry!" she exclaimed, indignantly. "Why, of course not."

I expressed my contrition in sufficiently humble terms, and after a time she consented to be mollified, and continued.

"No," she said. "It's an important question-about what I owe to him, and what I owe to others and to myself." As she had absolutely surrendered every thought-merged her whole being in him-I was a little astonished.

"You know," she went on, "that I have been interested-because I thought it was right-in trying to do some good in the world.”

She was so serious that I did not like

"And you know that Aunt Margaret has thought that I was rather foolish about that," she said.

Aunt Margaret! I am sure that my eyes snapped viciously behind my spectacles, while my lips shut very tightly, and my fingers tapped impatiently on the desk before me. Undoubtedly she was once my greatest friend, but that was long ago, and a great deal had happened, though if I look into my heart of hearts I am obliged to confess that the only fault that I can find with her is that there is really no fault to find. Except for a little worldliness and selfishness- But never mind. I really can discover no decent pretext for condemning her, and I won't try.

"She told me a story that troubled me," said my pretty visitress.

I could imagine Margaret as she said what she had to say, with her gentle, sympathetic voice and her soothing, tolerant manner. Even if it were something disagreeable, she would communicate it more pleasantly than another. This was always her way, and, indeed, it was her avowed principle to make life as comfortable as possible for those about her, and almost unconsciously she used every feminine grace and charm, and sometimes a little feminine deception, to accomplish this.

"It was such a very insignificant story -in a way," my caller went on. "And yet I cannot forget it, and the more I try, the more I remember it. In a manner it might apply to me and my-relations with Harry, and that's how I am sure Aunt Margaret intended me to look at it."

How very like Margaret, I thought, to try to reach a result through the perfectly non-committal means of a story, but I said nothing.

"There was a girl," she said, "just like me. No; because she was very rich and all alone in the world, and could do exactly as she pleased. But she was like me in this, that she was anxious to be of some use and do some good in the world, though I know that you don't think really that I am."

She looked up at me, and with a glance convicted me of ungenerous skepticism. "And she was like me too because there was a man who was very fond of her. She liked him very much too; but she had 'ideals,' and beliefs as to what was a modern woman's duty. But the man laughed at her. Well, Harry laughs at me. Only the other day he said, when he answered me after he had laughed at me when I asked him if I might study to be a trained nurse-he said that he couldn't see, for his part, why I wanted to do a thing that seemed to him so absurd."

I stopped her to call attention to the fact that in one short sentence she had employed the personal pronoun "he" five times, using the objective and dative case "him," and also throwing in the possessive "his." I added that I did not mind hearing about "Harry" in moderation, but that if she talked about him so much she could not get on with her narration. Anyway," she went on, repentantly, "I told him that I could take care of him when he was unwell, and then he said that he didn't see why he "

Whereupon she had the grace to blush, and paused.

"Well," she resumed, the story. I am going to call the man Stephen, because I happen to know that his name was Stephen, and it's easier to call him by some name. He was very much in love, and did not care at all about 'charity,' or education,' or the elevation of anybody or anything. He just wanted to marry the girl and live happily ever afterward. Harry-"

Here she paused, even laughing at herself, and then went on:

"But the girl could not feel that it was right to give up all her plans and purposes. As I told you, she had a large fortune-a fortune so large that it was almost a business to take care of it-and so she had very early got into the way of doing things and being called upon to