THE HOUSE OF YORKE.

"Omniscient spirit! whose all-ruling powerBids from each sense bright emanations beam,Glows in the rainbow, sparkles in the stream,Smiles in the bud, and glistens in the flowerThat crowns each vernal bower!"

—and the radiant being, dazzling and beautiful, who springs to life and typifies the material universe,

"Heavenly pensive on the lotus lay,That blossomed at his touch, and shed a golden ray."[56]

In Egypt, when carried thither, it naturally retained a sort of sacred character. It is represented in their paintings and sculptures more frequently than any other plant; in scenes of festivity and processions, where it is twined with other flowers into wreaths and chaplets; and also in sacred scenes. Mr. Wilkinson describes a painting found at Thebes, in which is represented the final judgment of a human being:

"Osiris is seated on a throne, as judge of the dead. He is attended by Isis and Nepthys, and before him are the four Genii of Amenti, standing on aLotus. Horus introduces the deceased whose actions have been weighed in the scales of Truth."

Lotus buds have been often found in the old tombs. It was also introduced into their architecture. The most favorite capital for a column was a full-blown water-plant, supposed to be the papyrus, with a bud of the same, or a lotus bud. A large variety of it called Lotomelia is cultivated there still in gardens.

Within the last few years, some information has been gathered relating to the domestic life of the early Egyptians, which was previously only conjecture. To use the words of Sir J. G. Wilkinson: "It has been drawn from a comparison of the paintings, sculptures, and monuments still existing, with the accounts of ancient authors."

On fragments of stone in different degrees of preservation, taken from the ruins of temples, tombs, and dead cities, are found representations of those who once stood here, surrounded by all the wealth and glory, the luxuries and magnificence of which this is the wreck. Cut in lines which time has not all effaced, or traced in colors which centuries have scarcely dimmed, we see here master and slave, kings, priests, and people, in all the occupations of ordinary life—a half-obliterated record of the pursuits, customs, habits, and tastes of a nation so remote that their place in the past cannot be even conjectured. We only know, from unmistakable evidence, that they came originally from Asia, and lived thus in the land of Egypt. Looking at these fragments of their skilful workmanship, thought goes back to an era almost fabulous! For who can call up even in fancy that period, when the Nile ran through its primitive landscape, and no foot of man had pressed its shore! When no cities stood in that fertile valley, and the first stone of the first pyramid was not yet laid! What a space of time must have elapsed between the first landing and the accomplishment of all these mighty labors! There is a mist over it all, gathered through uncounted centuries; and although science and research have thrown some light, it is not much more than the flickering torch with which one walks at midnight; a little is revealed near at hand, but all beyond is darkness.

Nevertheless, so much of interest is connected with Egypt that the least added knowledge is of value; for not only is it mentioned by the most ancient profane writers as mysterious in antiquity even to them, but it is the land of the Old Testament. Mounds of ruins, great in height and extent, on a branch of the Nile, yet mark the place ofTanis,[57]theZoanof Scripture, where, according to the Psalmist, Moses wrought those miracles which ended in the exodus of the Jews. On paintings found at Thebæ, theNo-Ammonof Scripture, are representations of slaves engaged in making bricks, with taskmasters superintending them; and although these may not be Jews, for brick-making was a universal menial occupation, it carries us back to the days when "bricks without straw" were demanded. The departure of the Israelites from bondage,B.C.1491, was in the reign of Thotmes III., the Pharaoh of Scripture, which records his destruction in that day, when,

"Pharaoh went in on horseback with his chariots and horsemen into the sea; and the Lord brought back upon them the waters of the sea, ... neither did so much as one of them remain, ... and they (the Israelites) saw the Egyptians dead upon the sea-shore."

It is remarkable that a drawing found at Thebes represents his son Amenoph, who succeeded him, as coming to the throne a mere child, under the guidance of his mother. But we digress too far.

Among other things learned by patient research, we perceive the admiration of the early Egyptians for flowers, and the care with which they cultivated them. "Flowers are represented on their dresses, chairs, boxes, boats, on everything susceptible of ornamentation; and flowers and leaves are painted on the linen found preserved in the tombs" (Wilkinson).

Pliny, in enumerating the flowers of ancient Egypt, says the myrtle is the most odoriferous; the reason, doubtless, for its being so often placed, as now found, about the dead. At present it is only cultivated in gardens. The other plants Pliny names as indigenous are the violet, rose, myosotis, clematis, chrysanthemum, and indeed nearly the whole catalogue of a modern garden. Figures on their paintings are decked with crowns and garlands of anemone, acacia, convolvulus, and some others. In the old tombs are found date-trees, sycamores, and the tamarisk.

There is a design at Thebes which represents the funeral procession of one evidently of rank. There are cars covered with palm branches, then female mourners, other personages, and next a coffin on a sledge decked with flowers.

In another very extensive and elaborate painting a similar procession is represented as crossing thelake of the dead, and going from thence to the tombs. The first boat contains coffins decked with flowers; in another is a high-priest, who offers incense before a table of offerings; another boat contains female mourners, others male mourners, and others chairs, boxes, etc.

"Gardens are frequently represented in the tombs of Thebes and other parts of Egypt, many of which are remarkable for their extent." (Wilkinson.)

To better understand an ancient Egyptian garden, we will first look at their dwellings. In some few cities where the size and somethinglike a plan can be distinguished, the streets are seen, some of them wide, but more very narrow. Their houses, garden-walls, public places, all but the temples, were of brick. The plan of the houses was similar to what now prevails in warm climates; the principal apartments were ranged round a courtyard, with chambers above them. In this court were a few trees, some boxes of flowering-plants, and a reservoir of water. Their houses were generally three stories in height.

"Besides these town-houses, the wealthy Egyptians had extensive villas, containing spacious gardens, watered by canals communicating with the Nile. They had also tanks of water in different parts of this garden, which served for ornament, and also for irrigation when the Nile was low. On these the master of the place amused himself and friends by excursions in a pleasure-boat."

Such a scene is represented in an old painting. The company are seated in the boat under a canopy; while slaves, or at least menials, walk along the bank and drag it after them, in a way similar to our canal navigation.

"So fond were the Egyptians of trees and flowers, and of gracing their gardens with all the profusion that could be obtained, that they exacted a tribute of rare productions from the nations tributary to them; foreigners from distant countries are represented as bearing plants, among other presents, to the Egyptian kings."[58]

To ancient Egypt we are doubtless indebted for the invention of artificial flowers, now so prominent in female attire. They were made there first from the papyrus, the plant of which paper was made. Some old writer relates that, when Agesilaus was in Egypt, he was so charmed with a kind of crowns and chaplets which he saw in use there, formed to resemble flowers, that he carried many of them home with him to Sparta. They were perhaps imitated in Greece and became universal, yet retained the name of the inventors; for Pliny says:

"Sic coronis e floribus receptis paulo mox sabiere quæ vocantur Ægyptiæ, ac deinde hibernæ, quum terra flores negat, ramento e comibus tincto."—Plin.xxi. 3.

Everything that pictures the domestic life of this people has such great interest that it is difficult to avoid digression. Every record of it expresses wealth and their peculiar tastes. Walls are profusely covered with various designs, doors are stuccoed to imitate costly wood, and their carved chairs have furnished symmetrical copies to modern art. Interspersed with these things, we have these traces of their flowers and gardens—a story of their rural pleasures in that day of glory, when they built the pyramids—that day which has no date! The hieroglyphics carved in stone, on which they doubtless securely relied for fame and a name to the end of time, yet cover the walls still standing of their superb temples; they are traced on tombs—on urns—on the rocks which surround cities—on the sarcophagi of the dead, even on the very linen which envelopes them—but they speak in a lost language! We comprehend only one brief epitaph—that a numerous and opulent people have entirely disappeared.

In the middle ages, Egypt was still noted for flowers and valuable aromatic shrubs and herbs. Cyrene in the north part was remarkable for the beauty of its adjacent country, which even then, says a writer,bore traces of having been in former times a perfect flower-garden.

In the time of Julius Cæsar, roses must have received particular attention and extensive cultivation, for we read that a ship-load of the most fragrant was sent as a gift to Cæsar. He received them, however, with the graceless remark that he could show finer ones in Rome.

Enough is not only as good as a feast, it is better; and a little less than enough is better yet. How dear is that affection in which we have something to forgive! How charming is that beauty where the defects serve as indices to point out how great the beauty is! How wholesome is that salt of labor which gives a taste to leisure! For since the time of Eve, the point of perfection, save with God, has been the point of decay; and profuse wealth has often deprived its possessor of great riches.

What we arrive at by this preamble is that the Yorkes had been unconsciously suffering from the apathy of satisfied wants, and were now delighted to find that comparative poverty brings many a pleasure in its train.

"Mamma," Clara exclaimed, "I do believe there is a certain pleasure in making the best of things."

It was the morning after their arrival, and the young woman was standing in a chair, driving a nail to hang on a picture. She had begun by groaning at sight of the wall, a white stucco painted over with brown flower-pots, holding blossoming rose-trees. But the cord of the frame matched those roses, and in some unexplained way the picture looked well on that background.

Mrs. Yorke, looking on, smiled at the remark. "There is a very certain pleasure in it, my dear," she said; "and I am glad that you have found it out."

Clara considered, gave the nail another blow, evened the picture, and contemplated it with her head on one side. It was an engraving of Le Brun's picture of Alexander at the camp of Darius. "Mamma," she began again, "I think that Alexander the Great ought to have had another name after the adjective."

"What name, child?"

"Goose! Why didn't he, instead of crying for more worlds to conquer, try to get at the inside of the one he had conquered the husk of? Why did not he study botany, geology, and—poverty?"

"You are right, Clara," the mother replied. "Excess is always blinding. Why, we might have our whole house covered with morning-glories, yet never see the little silver tree that stands down in a garden of light at the bottom of each."

Clara clapped her hands with delight. "But fancy the house coveredfrom top to bottom with morning-glories all in bloom! It would be magical!"

"Fancy yourself falling out of that chair," suggested Mrs. Yorke.

The girl stepped down, and walked thoughtfully toward the door. "How odd it is," she said, pausing on the threshold, and looking back; "I never see one truth, but immediately I perceive another looking over its shoulder. And the last is greater than the first."

"It is perhaps an example of truth which you see at first," Mrs. Yorke said. "And afterward you perceive the truth itself."

Clara went slowly toward the stairs, and her mother listened after her, expecting to hear some philosophical remark flung down over the balusters. Instead of that, she heard a loud call to Betsey that the hens and chickens were all in the parlor, screams of laughter at the scene of their violent expulsion, then a clear lark-song as Clara finished her ascent.

Up-stairs, Melicent and Hester were busy and cheerful, quiet, too, till Clara came. She soon created a breeze, and sounds of eager discussion came down to their mother's ears. They were laying plans for the summer. They would have company down from Boston, and, when winter came, would each in turn visit the city. They would have more help in the house; and, in order to pay for it, would write for publication. Every one else wrote; why not they? Indeed, Melicent had appeared in print, a friendly editor having taken with thanks some sketches she had written between drive and opera. "What is worth printing is worth paying for," she said now; "and I shall feel no reluctance in announcing that in future my Pegasus runs for a purse."

Clara had never been before the public; but she had reams of paper written over with stories, poems, plays, and even sermons. She caught fire at everything, and, in the first excitement, dashed off some crude composition, but seldom or never went over it coolly. Melicent, to whom alone she showed her productions, had discouraged her. "You are like Nick Bottom, and insist on doing everything," she said. "It is a sign of incompetence."

Miss Yorke was one of those hyper-fastidious persons who establish a reputation for critical ability simply by finding fault with everything. Clara, on the contrary, was supposed to have a defective taste, because she was always admiring, and searching out hidden beauties.

But now at least Melicent condescended to admit that her sister might be able to accomplish something in a small way, and it was agreed that they should broach the subject to the assembled family that very evening.

At this encouragement, Clara rejoiced. "You see," she exclaimed, "I've been afraid that I might gradually grow into one of those lugubrious Dorcases who go round laying everybody out."

Edith, following her aunt and cousins about, rejoiced in everything. To her, this house, with its rat-holes and its dingy paint and plaster, was superb. The space, the sunshine, the air of elegance in spite of defects, the gentle voices and ways, all enchanted her. She found herself at home. Her own room was the last bubble on her cup of joy. They had given her the middle chamber over the front door, with a window opening out on to the portico, and each of the family had contributed some article of use or adornment. Mrs. Yorke gave an alabaster statuetteof the Blessed Virgin, Mr. Yorke a Douay Bible, Melicent hung an engraving of the Sistine Madonna where Edith's first waking glance would fall upon it, Clara gave an olive-wood crucifix from Jerusalem, with a shell for holy water, Hester brought an ivory rosary, and Carl a missal in Latin and French, which she must learn to read, he said.

They covered the floor with a soft Turkey carpet, set up a little iron bed, and draped it whitely, and put a crimson valance over the lace curtain of her window. The sisters worked sweetly and harmoniously in fitting up this bower for their young cousin, and were pleased to see her delight in what to them were common things. When she gratefully embraced each one, and kissed her on both cheeks, they felt more than repaid. Clara blushed up with pleasure at her cousin's caress.

"The little gypsy has taking ways," Carl thought; and he said, "If you kiss Clara that way many times, she will have roses grow in her cheeks."

Then Edith went down-stairs to her aunt, and Carl went out to assist his father.

Mr. Yorke was no exception to the general cheerfulness. He found himself more interested, while planning his summer's work with Patrick, than he had ever been while engaged in the finest landscape gardening, with an artist at his orders. Early in the morning he had captured two boys who were loitering about, and they willingly engaged themselves for the day to pick up wheel-barrow loads of small stones, and throw them into the mud of the avenue.

"Mr. Yorke has got himself into business," Patrick remarked to Carl. "That avenue has a wonderful appetite of its own."

Carl repeated this observation to his father. "And I think Pat is right," he added. "See how complacently that mud takes in all you throw to it. It seems to smile over the last load of pebbles."

Mr. Yorke put up his eye-glasses. He always did that when he wished to intensify a remark or a glance. "I intend to make these avenues solid, if I have to upset the whole estate into them," he remarked.

Mrs. Yorke sat in a front window holding an embroidery-frame, and Edith occupied a stool at her feet. The child had told all her story; her recollections of her mother, her life with the Rowans, of Captain Cary, and her ring. But of Mr. Rowan's burial she said nothing. That was to remain a secret with those who had assisted.

When Mrs. Yorke occasionally dropped her work, and sat looking out at her husband and son, Edith caressed the hand lying idly on that glowing wool, and held her own slender brown fingers beside those fair ones, for a contrast. She could not enough admire her aunt's snow-drop delicacy, rich hair, and soft eyes.

Mr. Yorke was too much engrossed to notice his wife; but Carl looked up now and then for a glance and smile.

"Do you recollect anything that happened when you were a little girl, Aunt Amy?" Edith asked.

The lady smiled and sighed in the same breath. "I was this moment thinking of a tea-party I had on that large rock you can just see at the right. I had heard my father readMidsummer-Night's Dream, and my fancy was captivated by it. So I invited Titania, Oberon, and all the fairies, and they came. It was an enchanting banquet. The plates were acorn-cups, the knives and forks were pine-needles, the cakes were white pebbles, and we drank drops of dew out of moss vases."

"I've read that play too," Edith said brightly. "Mr. Rowan had it. And I read about Ariel. But I didn't like Caliban nor Bottom, and I think it was a shame to cheat Titania so. Do you remember anything else?"

"Yes. When I was five or six years old, my father brought home a new map of the State of Maine, and hung it on that wall opposite. It was bright and shining, and had the name in great letters across the whole. My father held me up before it in his arms, and said I should have a silver quarter if I would tell him what the great letters spelt. How I tried! not so much for the silver, though I wanted it, as for the honor of success, and to please my father. But I couldn't make less than two syllables of it. To me M, A, I, N, E, spelt Mainé. But my father gave me the quarter. I suppose he thought that the language, and not I, was at fault."

"I don't see why letters should be put into words when they are not needed there," Edith remarked. "I would like to have them left out. It makes a bother, and takes time."

The child did not know that she was uttering revolutionary sentiments, and that the reddest of red republicanism lurked in her speech.

Mrs. Yorke mused over her embroidery, set a golden stitch in a violet, drew it too tightly, and had to loosen it.

"Oh!" Edith exclaimed, her memory catching on that thread. "That makes me recollect that I knit a tight strip into the heel of Mr. Rowan's stocking, and I can see just how it looked. But I didn't know it then."

There was a sound of wheels, and Mrs. Yorke looked up to see a carriage drawn by a pair of greys coming up the avenue. Major Cleaveland had lost no time in calling on his neighbors.

Mr. Yorke went down to meet his visitor, the road being too penitential for travel, and the two walked up together. They had known each other by sight in Boston, where the major spent his winters, but had no farther acquaintance. Now they met cordially, and stood a while talking in the portico before going in to see the ladies. Major Cleaveland was fresh-faced, pleasant-looking, and rather pompous in manner. A deep crape on his hat proclaimed him a widower. Indeed, Mrs. Cleaveland had not long survived young Mrs. Yorke, and the two had, ere this, let us hope, amicably settled the question of precedence.

The visit was an agreeable one to all, though it was evident that the visitor felt more at ease with the ladies than with his host. He was slightly disconcerted by Mr. York's piercing eyes, aquiline nose, and emphatic mode of speech, and on the whole found him rather too dominant in manner. It appeared that there were to be two lords in Seaton instead of one.

We doubt if the most amiable of Bengal lions would be altogether pleased at seeing his proper jungle invaded by even the politest of Nubian lions; and we may be pretty sure that the lioness would hear in private more than one remark detrimental to the dignity of that odious black monster with his desert manners. And in return, it is not unlikely that the African desert-king might sneer at his tawny brother as rather an effeminate creature. It is not the lionesses alone who have rivalries. Certain it is that, when Major Cleaveland had gone, and the ladies chose to praise him very highly, Melicent pronouncing him to be a superior person, Mr. Yorke saw fitto greet the remark with one of his most disagreeable smiles.

"Don't you think so, papa?" asks Melicent.

"He has intellectual tastes, but no intellectual power," answered "papa" most decidedly. "He has glimmerings."

But for all that, the call was a pleasant one, the gentleman lingering half an hour, and then going with reluctance. The presence of Edith had caused him a momentary embarrassment. He was not sure that it would be delicate to remember having ever seen her before, and yet her smiling eyes seemed to expect a recognition. But Mrs. Yorke brought her forward immediately. "Edith tells me you are an acquaintance," she said, "and that you have been very kind to her."

Before going, Major Cleaveland placed his pews in the meeting-house at their disposal, and offered to send a carriage for them the next morning. "I have two of the best pews in Dr. Martin's church," he said, "and since my boys went away to school, there has been no one but myself to occupy them. There is room in each for six persons; and I sit in one, and put my hat in the other. Of course, we look like two oases in a red velvet desert. Do come, ladies, and make a garden of the place."

They all went out to the portico with him when he took leave, and he went away charmed with their cordiality, and with several new ideas in his mind. One of the first effects of this enlightenment was that the major appeared at meeting the next day without a crape on his hat.

It was a fatiguing day, that Saturday; but at sunset their labors were over, all but arranging the books. The boxes containing these Mr. Yorke had brought into the sitting-room after tea, and the young people assisted him. He classified his library in a way of his own. Metaphysical works he placed over science, since "metaphysics is only physics etherized," he said. One shelf, named the Beehive, was filled with epigrams and satires. History and fiction were indiscriminately mingled. Mr. Yorke liked to quote Fielding—"pages which some droll authors have been facetiously pleased to call the history of England."

"There are certain time-honored lies which every intelligent and well-informed person is expected to be familiar with," he said. "Not to know Hume, De Foe, Fox, Cervantes, Froude, Le Sage, etc., argues one's self unknown."

In a corner of the case was the Olympus where Mr. Yorke's especial intellectual favorites were placed—among them Bolingbroke, Carlyle, Emerson, and Theodore Parker. "They are fine pagans," he said of the two last.

Mrs. Yorke mused in the chimney-corner, her head resting on her hand, the smouldering fire throwing a faint glow up in her face. Edith sat by a table looking over William Blake's illustrations of Blair'sGrave—a set of plates that had just been sent them from England. The daughters took books from the boxes, and called their names; Carl, mounted on steps, placed the upper ones; and Mr. Yorke did everything they did, and more. He scolded, ordered, commented, and now and then opened a book to read a passage, or give an opinion of the author.

"Don't put Robert Browning beside Crashaw!" he cried out. "You might as well put Lucifer beside St. John."

"Why, I thought you admired Browning, papa," Melicent said.

"So I do; but half his lustre is phosphorescent. It is a spiritual decay, and the lightnings of a superbmind. But Crashaw is an angel. Edith must read him."

Looking at such a library, a Catholic remembers well that the serpent still coils about the tree of knowledge, hisses in the rustling of it, and poisons many a blossom with his breath. Worse yet, though the antidote is near, few or none take it. Those for whom slanders against the church are written, never read the refutation. How many who read in Motley'sDutch Republicthat absolutions were sold in Germany at so many ducats for each crime, the most horrible crimes, either committed or to be committed, having an easy price—how many of those readers ask if it be true, or glance at a page which disproves the slander? Who on reading Prescott looks to the other side to see exposed his insinuations, his false deductions from true facts? How many of those countless thousands who have been nurtured on the calumnies of Peter Parley, drawing them in from their earliest childhood, have ever read a page on which his condemnation is written? And later, in the periodical literature of the day, with a thousand kindred attacks, how many of those who, within a few months, have read in theAtlantic MonthlyMrs. Child's impertinent article on Catholicism and Buddhism, stopped to see that her argument, such as it was, was directed less against the church than against Christianity itself? or looked in Marshall'sChristian Missionsto find that the resemblance is simply a reflection of the early labors of the only missionaries who have ever influenced Asia—the faint echoes of "the voice of one crying in the wilderness"?

But it is vain to multiply names. "The trail of the serpent is over them all."

The books in their places, Mr. Yorke seated himself to look over a casket of precious coins and rings. "Wouldn't you think that papa was dreaming over some old love-token of his boyhood?" whispered Clara to her brother.

Her father had fallen into a dream over an old ring with a Latin posy in it; and what he saw was this: a blue sky, jewel-blue, over Florence, in whose air, says Vasari, "lies an immense stimulus to aspire after fame and honor." He saw a superb garden, peopled with sculptured forms, and three men standing before an antique marble. It is Bertoldo, Donatello's pupil, young Michael Angelo, and Lorenzo the Magnificent, the glory of Florence, whose face all the people and all the children love; and they are walking in the gardens of San Marco, the art-treasury of the Medici. Farther off, moving slowly under the trees, with his hands behind his back, and his eagle face bent in thought, is the learned and elegant Poliziano. Suddenly he pauses, a smile flashes across his face, he brings his hands forward to clap them together, and goes to meet the three who have respected his seclusion. "How now, Poliziano," laughs the duke, "do we not deserve to hear the result of those musings which we were so careful not to intrude upon?" And the scholar, whose epigrams no less than his Greek and his translations are the pride of the court, bows lowly, and repeats the very posy engraved on this ring over which Mr. Yorke now dreams in the nineteenth century, in the woods of Maine, in April weather.

The bright Italian picture faded. Mr. Yorke sighed and put the magical ring away, and took up a volume of Villemain'sHistoire de la Littérature Française, turning the leaves idly.

Melicent made a slight movement, and begged to be heard. "We girls have been talking matters over to-day," she said, "and would like to submit our plans to you. We have divided the house-work into three parts, which we take in rotation. One is to be lady's-maid and companion for mamma, another is to make the beds and dust all the rooms, and the third will set the table, wash the china and silver, and trim the lamps."

Mr. Yorke looked up quickly as his daughter began, but immediately dropped his eyes again, and sat with a flushed face, frowning slightly. It was his first intimation that his daughters had not only lost society and luxury, but that their personal ease was gone. They would have to perform menial labors.

"I think your arrangement a very good one, Melicent," Mrs. Yorke replied tranquilly. She had all the time seen the necessity. "But the post of lady's-maid will be a sinecure. However, let it stay. It will be a time of leisure for each."

"Cannot Betsey do the work?" Mr. Yorke asked sharply.

"Why, papa!" Clara cried out, "Betsey can scarcely spare time out of the kitchen to do the sweeping. When we come to making butter, we girls will have to help in the fine ironing."

"I can churn!" Mr. Yorke exclaimed desperately.

"My dear!" expostulated his wife.

"I churned once when I was a boy," he protested; "and the butter came."

They all laughed, except Hester, who affectionately embraced her father's arm. "Why shouldn't the butter come when you churn, dear papa?" she asked.

"You must have been in very good humor, sir," said Carl slily.

"We don't mean to do this sort of work long," Melicent resumed. "There is no merit in doing servile work, if one can do better. Clara and I will write, and so pay for extra help. I think"—very indulgently—"that, with practice, Clara may make something of a writer. I shall write a volume of European travels. On the whole, looking at our reverses in this light, they seem fortunate. Living here in quiet, we can accomplish a literary labor for which we should never otherwise have found time."

"That is true," Mr. Yorke said; but his look was doubtful and troubled. "Still, Melicent, I would not have you too confident. I would advise you to try a story. It would be more likely to sell. Europeréchaufféehas become a drug in the market, and our experiences abroad were pretty much what those of others are. A vagabond adventurer would have a much better chance of catching public attention."

Edith gazed in awe at her companions. She was in the midst of people who made books! She saw them face to face. So might pretty Psyche have gazed when first her husband's celestial relatives received her, when she saw Juno among her peacocks, Minerva laying aside her helmet, Hebe pouring nectar. This, then, is Olympus!

"If you write a story, do take one suggestion from me, Melicent," Carl said. "Pray give your hero and heroine brushes to dress their hair with. Have you observed that even the finest characters in books have to use a broom? The hair is alwayssweptback."

Miss Yorke did not notice this triviality. She was looking rather displeased.

"I don't want to discourage you, daughter," her father went on. "Butyou must recollect that it is one thing to give a sketch to an editor, who is a friend, and dines with you, and another thing to offer him a book, which he is expected to pay for. Then he must look to the market and his reputation. Some of the finest writers in the world have described these very scenes which you would describe. Can you tell more of Rome than Madame de Staël has? or paint a more enchanting picture of Capri than that of Hans Andersen? If not, you run the risk of reminding your reader of Sidney Smith's reply to the dull tourist who held out his walking-stick, boasting that it had been round the world. 'Yes; and still it is a stick!' says Sidney."

Miss Yorke held her head very high, and her color deepened. "I will then put myMS.into the fire," she said in a quiet tone, casting her eyes down.

Her father gave an impatient shrug. "Not at all!" he replied. "But you will take advice, and try to think that you are not above criticism."

"Clara has an idea," Carl interposed. He had been bending over some papers with his younger sister. "She also turns to travels, but very modestly. She calls them gleanings, and her motto is from De Quincey: 'Not the flowers are for the pole, but the pole is for the flowers.' Here is the preface. Shall I read it?"

"Oh! I am afraid of papa!" Clara cried, blushing very much. But Mr. Yorke, who only now learned that his second daughter was also a scribbler, laughingly promised to be lenient; and she suffered herself to be persuaded. They all looked kindly on her, even Melicent, in spite of her own mortification; and Carl read:

"I do not presume to write a volume descriptive of European travel. Many, great and small, have been in that field, some reaping wheat, others binding up tares. These leaves are offered by one who gathered a few nodding things which no one valued, seeing them there, but which some one may, if fortune favor, smile at, since they grew there. One such might say: You're but a weed; but you grew in a chink of crumbling history; I know where, for I measured the arch, and sketched the colonnade. And I recognize the green leaves of you, and the silver thread of a root, with a speck of rich old soil clinging yet. And,à propos, I saw there a child asleep in the shade, with a group of spotted yellow lilies standing guard, as if they had sprung up since, and because she had closed her eyes, and might change to a group of tigers if you should go too near. She had long eyelashes, and she smiled in her sleep.

"I do not claim to be an artist, O travelled reader! but I stretch a hand to touch the artist in you."

"That isn't bad," Mr. Yorke said immediately. "And your motto is very pretty. I am glad to have you familiar with De Quincey. He is good company. He is a man who does not overlook delicate hints, and he is respectful and just to children. He annoys me sometimes by a weak irony, and by explaining too much; but, I repeat, he is good company."

Immediately Clara passed from the deeps to the heights. Her bosom heaved, her eyes flashed. She felt herself famous.

"Now let us hear a chapter of the gleanings," said her father.

"Why, I haven't written anything but the preface," Clara was forced to acknowledge.

Mr. Yorke smiled satirically. Clara was notable in the family for making great beginnings which came to nothing.

"But I have other things finished," she said eagerly, and brought out a poem. All her fears were gone. She was full of confidence in herself.

We spare the reader a transcription of this production. Mephistopheles had a good deal to do with it, and it was probably written during some midnight ecstasy, when the young woman had been reading Faust. It was meant to be very fearful; and as the authoress read it herself, all the terrible passages were rendered with emphasis.

Mrs. Yorke listened with a doubtful face. The reading was quite out of her gentle mental sphere; and Carl's hand shaded his eyes, which had a habit of laughing when his lips did not. Mr. Yorke, with his mouth very much down at the corners, his eyes very much cast down, and his eyebrows very much raised, glanced over a page of the book in his hand.

"I chanced to-night across the first touch of humor I have seen in Villemain," he said. "He quotes Crébillon:'Corneille à pris le ciel, Racine la terre; il ne me restait plus que l'enfer. Je m'y suis jetté à corps perdu.' 'Malheureusement,'says Villemain,'malheureusement il n'est pas aussi infernal qu'il le croit.'"

Without raising his face, Mr. Yorke lifted his eyes, and shot at the poetess a glance over his glasses.

Instantly her face became suffused with blushes, and her eyes with tears.

Mrs. Yorke spoke hastily. "I am sure, papa, the dear girls deserve every encouragement for their intentions and efforts. I am grateful and happy to see how nobly they are taking our troubles; and I cannot doubt that, with their talents and good-will, they will accomplish something. But it is too late to talk more about it to-night. You must be tired, and my head is as heavy as a poppy. Shall we have prayers?"

She rose in speaking, went to the table, and, standing between her two elder daughters, with an arm round the neck of each, kissed them both, tears standing in her eyes. "If you never succeed in winning fame, my dears," she said, "I shall still be proud and fond of you. Your sweet, helpful spirit is better than many books."

The Yorkes had never given up, though they had often interrupted, the habit of family devotion. Now it was tacitly understood that the custom should be a regular one. So Hester brought the Bible and prayer-book, and placed them before her father, and her sisters folded their hands to listen.

"I think we should have Betsey in," Mrs. Yorke said; and Melicent went to ask her.

Betsey and Patrick were seated at opposite sides of a table drawn up before the kitchen fireplace, where a hard-wood knot burned in a spot of red gold. One of the windows was open, and through it came a noise of full brooks hurrying seaward, and a buzzing, as of many bees, that came from the saw-mills on the river. Betsey was darning stockings, and Pat reading thePilot.

"We are to have prayers now," Melicent said, standing in the door. "Will you come in, Betsey?"

Betsey slowly rolled up the stocking, and stabbed the darning-needle into the ball of yarn. "Well, I don't care if I do," she answered moderately. "It can't do me no great harm."

Melicent gave her a look of surprise, and returned to the sitting-room, leaving the doors ajar.

"Come, Pat," said Betsey, "put away that old Catholic paper, andcome in and hear the Gospel read. I don't believe you ever heard a chapter of it in your life."

"No more did St. Peter nor St. Paul," answered Patrick, without lifting his eyes from the paper. He had been reading over and over one little item of news from County Sligo, where he was born. The old priest who had baptized him was dead; and with the news of his death, and the description of his funeral, how many a scene of the past came up! He was in Ireland again, poor, but careless and happy. His father and mother, now old and lonely in that far land, were still young, and all their children were about them. The priest, a man in his prime, stood at their cottage door, with his hand on little Norah's head. They all smiled, and Norah cast her bashful eyes down. Now the priest was white-haired, and dead, and little Norah had grown to be a careworn mother of many children. The man was in no mood to hear taunts. Read the Gospel? Why, it was like reading a gospel to look back on that group; for they were true to the faith, and poor for the faith's sake, and they had lived pure lives for Christ's love, and those who had died had died in the Lord.

"But Peter and Paul wrote," answered Betsey. "And what they wrote is the law of God. You'll never be saved unless you read it."

"Many a one will be damned who does read it!" retorted Patrick wrathfully. "What's the use of reading a law-book, if you don't keep the law?"

"Oh! if you're going to swear, I'll go," Betsey replied with dignity, and went. But she took care to leave the doors ajar behind her.

It was true, Patrick did not read the Bible much; but he knew the Gospels and Psalms in the prayer-book, and was as familiar with the truths of Scripture as many a Bible student. But he had heard it so be-quoted by those who were to him not much better than heathen, and so made a bone of contention by snarling theologians, that he did not much care to read the book itself. He could not now avoid hearing it read without leaving the room; and he would not have had them hear him show that disrespect to them.

Mr. Yorke's voice had a certain bitter, rasping quality, which, with his fine enunciation, was very effective in some kinds of reading. In the sacred Scriptures it gave an impression of grandeur and sublimity. Patrick dropped his paper, and listened to the story of the martyrdom of St. Stephen. He knew it well, but seemed now to hear it for the first time. He saw no book, he heard a voice telling how the martyr stood before his accusers, with "his face as the face of an angel," and flung back their accusation upon themselves, till "they were cut to the heart," and "gnashed with their teeth at him."

"Faith!" he muttered excitedly; "but he had them there!"

As Mr. Yorke went on with the story, and the saint, looking steadfastly upward, declared that he saw the heavens open, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, Patrick rose unconsciously to his feet, and blessed himself. To his pure faith and unhackneyed imagination the scene was vividly clear. He heard the outcry of the multitude, saw them rush upon their victim, drive him out of the city and stone him, till he fell asleep in the Lord.

"'And a young man named Saul was consenting to his death,'" said the voice.

"Glory be to God!" exclaimed Patrick, taking breath.

The prayer that followed grated on his feelings. The reader lost his fire, and merely got through this part of the exercises. Evidently, Mr. Yorke did not believe that he was praying. Neither did Patrick believe that he was.

The next morning Major Cleaveland's carriage came to take them to what they called church. Melicent and Clara had already set out to walk. Carl stayed at home with Edith, and only Mr. and Mrs. Yorke and Hester drove. They overtook the others at the steps of the meeting-house, and found Major Cleaveland waiting in the porch for them.

Mrs. Yorke was one of those sweet, unreasoning souls who fancy themselves Protestant because they were born and trained to be called so, but who yield as unquestioning an obedience to their spiritual teachers as any Catholic in the world. She unconsciously obeyed the recommendation, "Don't be consistent, but be simply true." Absurdly illogical in her theology, she followed unerringly, as far as she knew, her instincts of worship, and the opinions that grew naturally from them. It would be hard to define what her husband thought and believed of Dr. Martin's sermon. He did not find it a feast of reason, certainly; but he swallowed it from a grim sense of duty, though with rather a wry face. The young ladies knew about as much of theology as Protestant ladies usually do, and that is—nothing. They left it all to the minister; and, provided he did not require them to believe anything disagreeable, were quite satisfied with him.

Coming home, they entertained their brother with a laughing account of their experience. The major had escorted Melicent to her seat, to the great amusement of the two sisters following. For Miss Yorke, sublimely conscious of herself, and that they were the observed of all observers, had walked with a measured tread, utterly irrespective of her companion; and the major, equally important, and slightly confused by his hospitable cares, had neglected to modify his usual short, quick steps. The result was, as Clara said, that "they chopped up the aisle in different metres," thus oversetting the gravity of the younger damsels following. Then their minds had been kept on the rack by an old gentleman in the pew in front of them, who went to sleep several times, following the customary programme: first a vacant stare, then a drooping of the eyelids, then a shutting of them, then several low bows, finally a sharp, short nod that threatened to snap his head off, followed by a start, and a manner that resentfully repudiated ever having been asleep.

"Poor old gentleman!" Mrs. Yorke said. "The day was warm, and Dr. Martin's voice lulling. How could he help it?"

"But, mamma," Clara answered, "he could have pinched himself; or I would have pinched him cheerfully."

A good many people called on them that week, and the family were surprised to find among them persons of cultivated minds. Beginning by wondering what they were to talk about with these people, they found that they had to talk their best.

They had made the mistake often made by city people, taking for granted that the finest and most cultivated minds are to be found in town. They forgot that city life fritters away the time and attention by a thousand varied and trivial distractions, so that deep thought and study become almost impossible. They neglect to observe that cities would degenerate if they were not constantly suppliedwith fresh life from the country; that the fathers that achieve are followed by the sons that dawdle, that the artist gives birth to the dilettante. 'Tis the country that nurses the tree which bears its fruit in the city. But, also, the country often hides its treasures, and the poet's fancy of "mute, inglorious Miltons" is as true as it is poetical.

In the country painting and sculpture and architecture are, it is true, only guessed at; but they have nature, which, as Sir Thomas Browne says, "is the art of God;" and books are appreciated there as nowhere else. The country reader dives like a bee into the poet's verse, and lingers to suck up all its sweetness; the city reader skims it like a butterfly. In the country the thinker's best thought is weighed, and pondered, and niched; in the city it is glanced at, and dismissed. In those retired nooks are women who quote Shakespeare over their wash-tubs, and read the English classics after the cows are milked, while their city sisters ponder the fashions, or listen to some third-rate lecturer, whose only good thought is, perhaps, a borrowed thought.

Still, all honor to that strong, swift life which grinds a man as under a millstone, and proves what is in him; which sharpens his sluggishness, breaks the gauze wings of him, and forces him out of a coterie and into humanity.

One day Dr. Martin called. Mrs. Yorke and her daughters, with Carl, were out searching for May-flowers, and there was no one at home to receive him but Mr. Yorke and Edith. Dr. Martin and the child met with great coldness, and instantly separated; but the two gentlemen kept up a conversation, though neither was quite at his ease. They needed a gentler companionship to bring them together. The minister was a man of good mind and education, and a kind heart; but his prejudices were strong and bitter, and the presence of that little "papist" disconcerted him. He soon took occasion, in answer to Mr. Yorke's civil inquiries respecting the churches in Seaton, to give expression to this feelings.

"We have, of course, a good many papists, but all of the lowest class," he said; "I have tried to do something for them; but they are so ignorant, and so enslaved by their priests, that it is impossible to induce them to listen to the Gospel."

Mr. Yorke drew himself up. "Perhaps you are not aware that my niece, Miss Edith Yorke, is a Catholic," he said in his stateliest manner.

Edith, standing in a window near, had not made a sound; but she looked at the minister, and fired at him two shots out of her two eyes. He in turn raised himself with an offended air at Mr. Yorke's reproof.

"I was certainly not aware that your sympathies were with the papists, sir," he said.

"Neither are they," was the cold reply. "But I profess to be a gentleman, and I try to be a Christian. One of my principles is never to insult the religious beliefs of another."

"But," objected the minister, stifling his anger, "if you never attack their errors, you lose the chance of enlightening them."

"Doctor," Mr. Yorke said with a slight laugh, "I don't believe you can ever enlighten a man's mind by pounding a hole in his head."

And so they dropped that part of the subject. But Mr. Yorke thought it best to define his own position, and thus prevent future mistakes.

"I believe in God," he said. "A man is a fool who does not. And I believe that the Bible was written by men inspired by him. But thereis no one thing in it for the truth of which I would answer with my life. It is the old fable of the divinity visiting earth wrapped in a cloud. Somewhere hidden in the Bible is the truth, but I see it as in a glass darkly. I think as little about it as possible. To study would be to entangle myself in a labyrinth. It is natural and necessary for man to worship; but it is neither natural nor reasonable for him to comprehend what he worships. To take in the divine, your brain must crack."

The minister perceived that argument was useless, and shortly after took leave.

Within a few weeks came a letter from Mrs. Rowan to Edith. It is not natural for people to write in their own way—that comes with education and practice; but this letter breathed the writer's very self. It radiated a timid distress. She had surprising news to tell. Instead of being in a tenement of her own, among plain people whom she would feel at ease with, she was installed as housekeeper in what seemed to her a very magnificent establishment. Mr. Williams, her employer, was an importing merchant, and his family consisted of a daughter, eighteen years of age, and an awful sister-in-law who lived in the next street, but visited his house at all hours of day or evening, superintending minutely his domestic arrangements. This gentleman knew Major Cleaveland well, and had for many years had business relations with Captain Cary. Indeed, it was their sailor friend who had procured the situation for her, and insisted on her taking it. She had refused as long as she could, but Dick himself joining against her, she had finally yielded. Mr. Williams was very kind. He had assured her that he did not want a city housekeeper, but some quiet, honest countrywoman to be in the house with his daughter, and see that the servants did not rob him.

At the conclusion of this letter, Mrs. Rowan added that Dick sent his respects, at which Edith's heart sank with disappointment. Where was the hearty affection, the eager remembrance she had looked for?

The child would have been less indignant had she known what pains Dick was really taking for her sake. He had searched out, and borrowed or bought all the printed correspondence of famous letter-writers that were to be had for love or money, and was studying them as models. He had also invested extravagantly in stationery, and was striving to bend his clear, clerkly penmanship to something more elegant and gentlemanlike. Even while she was accusing him of forgetfulness, he was carefully copying his tenth letter to her.

But still, Edith was not to blame, though she was mistaken. Affection has no right to be silent.

After a few days, however, came his farewell before sailing for the East. Over this note, Edith shed bitter tears, as much for the manner as for the matter of it. For Dick, with an eye to Mrs. Yorke as a reader, had composed a very dignified epistle after the manner of Doctor Johnson. Poor Dick! who could have written the most eloquent letter in the world, if he hadpoured his heart out freely and simply.

The child had scant time allowed her for mourning, for her studies began immediately. The family were all her teachers, and she began at once with music and languages. The common branches were taught indirectly. Geography she learned by looking out on the maps places mentioned in their reading or conversation. History she learned chiefly through biography. For arithmetic, some one gave her every day a problem to solve. She added up household expenses, measured land, laid out garden-beds, weighed and measured for cooking. Her study was all living: not a dead fact got into her mind. She read a great deal besides, travels, all that she could find relating to the sea, and poetry. As her mind became interested, she settled once more into harmony with herself, and her feelings grew quiet. The impression left by Dick's strange behavior after their parting faded away, and she remembered only his last fervent protestation: "I'll climb, Edith, I'll climb!" How it was to be, and what it really meant, she knew not; but the old faith in him came back. "What Dick said he'd do, he always did."

She associated him with all she read or heard of foreign lands and waters. He had sailed through phosphorescent seas by night, under wide-eyed stars, while the waves tossed in fire from his prow, and trailed in fire in his wake. He had lain in the warm southern ocean, where the tides are born, had held his breath during that pause when all the waters of the earth hang balanced, and swung his cap as he felt the first soft pulse of the infant tidal wave that was to grow till its rim should cast a wreath of foam on every shore from the North Pole to the South. Palms and the banyan-tree, pines almost huge enough to tip the earth over, each in turn had shaded his head. His venturesome feet had trod the desert and the jungle. Jews and Moslems had looked after him as he sauntered through their crowded bazaars—the bright-eyed, laughing sailor-boy! Norsemen had smiled as they saw his hair blown back and his face kindled by the tempest. It was always Dick to the fore of everything.

On one of those spring mornings, Carl, wandering through the woods, came out into the road in front of an old school-house that stood at the edge of the village. The door was open, and showed a crowd of children at their studies inside. On the green in front of the door lay a log, and on the log sat a deplorable-looking little man. He was neither young nor old, but seemed to be stranded on some bleak age which time had forgotten. His clothes were gentlemen's clothes cut down and patched. A hat that was too large for him reached from his forehead to his neck. It was not crushed, but it was shabby, and drooped sorrowfully in the brim. His hair was thin and long, and patted down. Tears rolled over his miserable face as he sat and looked in at the children saying their lessons in a long class. He did not cover his face in weeping, but lifted his eyebrows, wiped the tears occasionally, and continued to gaze.

Carl was one of the last persons in the world to intrude on another, or allow any intrusion on himself, but after a moment's hesitation he ventured to approach this pitiful little figure, and ask what ailed him.

The man showed no surprise on being addressed, but poured out his grief at once. His name was Joseph Patten, he was poor and had a large family, and was obliged to receivetown help. As a condition of that help, he must give up one of his children to be bound out to work, or adopted into a family. The parents were allowed to choose which child they would part with, and "Joe," as he was called by everybody, was now trying to make up his mind. His story was told in a whimpering voice, and with many tears, and the listener was quite as much provoked to laugh as to weep.

"It isn't easy to part with your own flesh and blood, sir," said Joe. "There's Sally, my oldest girl, named for her marm. She helps about the house. My wife couldn't get along without Sally. The next one is Joseph. He's named for me; and I don't want to give up the child that's named for myself, sir. Then John, he's got the rickets, and is used to be fed and taken care of. You couldn't expect a man to send away a child that's got the rickets, and let him drop all his food before he gets it to his mouth. Then Betsey, she's named for my mother. How am I going to send away the child that's named for my own mother, when she's dead and gone, and let her live among strangers? Jane, she's homesick; she cries if she is out of her marm's sight a minute. She'd cry herself to death if she was to be carried off. Then there's Jackson, named for General Jackson. You don't suppose I could give away a child that's named for General Jackson! And George Washington, named for the father of his country. Why, I could do without any of 'em sooner than I could without George Washington. And Paul, he's named for the 'postle Paul. It would be a sin and a shame to give away a boy that's named for the 'postle Paul. And Polly, she's the baby. You can't give a baby away from its own mother."

There had been several other children who had died, chiefly from unwholesome little fevers, to which they seemed addicted.

Carl was unable to assist the man in his choice; but he comforted him somewhat by promising to visit his family soon, and left him weeping, and gazing through the door at his children.

That same afternoon Carl and Melicent went out to visit Joe Patten's family. It had occurred to the young woman that she might be able to train one of the pauper's boys for a house-servant, and thus benefit them and her own family at the same time.

The Pattens lived directly back of the Yorkes' place, about half a mile farther into the woods, and their house had no communication with the public ways save by a cart-road. Joe's sole income was derived from the sale of little snags of wood that he hauled into the village, and exchanged for groceries. In Seaton wood was a drug in the market. A man must cut his beech and maple into clear split logs, and season it well, if he expected to get two dollars a cord for it.

The walk through the woods was a pleasant one, for nature was stirring all alive about them. This nature was no Delilah of the tropics, and to one who loved a bold and gorgeous beauty it was poor. But for those who like to seek beauty in her shyer, hidden ways, it had a delicate and subtle charm. The profuse snowy bloom of wild-cherries showed in a cloud here and there against the red or salmon-colored flowers of maples and oaks. Silver birches glimmered through their shining foliage, like subsiding nymphs, and the tassels of the larch swung out their brown and gold. Violets blue and white opened thickly in wetplaces, sisterhoods of snowdrops stood with their drooping heads tenderly streaked with pink, little knubbles of land were covered thickly with old and young checkerberry—"ivry-leaves" the children called them, drops of gum oozed through the rough bark of spruce and hemlock, brooks rushed frothing past, and birds were returning to their nests or building new ones.

Soon they heard sounds of human life through the forest quiet, the loud voice of a scolding woman and a confused babel of children's voices.

Carl smiled mockingly. "A troop of dryads, probably," he remarked.

Suddenly they came out close to a small log-house that stood in an irregular clearing; and now the scolding and the babel were plain to be heard.

"I'll lick you like a sack if you don't bring some dry sticks to get supper with!" cried a woman's voice, and at the same instant a ragged little boy bounded from the door, helped, apparently, by some outward application, and ran for the woods, his bare feet seeming insensible to sticks and stones. Then, all at once, there was silence, and clusters of two-colored heads in the windows, and peeping from the door. The visitors had been discovered. As they approached the door, a large, wild-eyed Boadicea came to meet them, and invited them in with great ceremony and politeness. She had an unwholesome, putty-colored skin and black hair and eyes. In one corner sat Joe, with the baby in his arms, and his hat on his head. This he removed, half-rose, and performed a salution which was more a courtesy than a bow. But he uttered not a word. "In this house clearly,

'Madame d'Acier est le père,'"

thought Carl.

With a sweep of the arm she banished the children all into one corner of the room (the house contained but one room), brought two strip-bottomed chairs, from one of which her husband had meekly fled at her approach, and, dusting them off with her apron, invited her visitors to be seated.

"You must excuse the confusion reigning in my poor mansion," she said with great suavity, and a very good accent. "Children are always disorderly. Sarah!" raising her voice, "bring the besom and sweep up the embers."

Melicent turned a look of dismay on her brother, who was taken with a slight cough. Sarah, otherwise Sally, came bashfully out from behind her father, where she had been crouching on the floor, and swept up the hearth with a brush broom.

The poor woman, anxious to do all honor to her visitors, and, also, to show them that she was above her circumstances, knew no other way than by using the largest words she could think of. Her idea of polite conversation was to make it as little as possible like anything she was accustomed to.

Melicent stated her errand at once, and the mother, with many thanks, and lamentations on her misfortunes, called the little ones forward, and placed them at the lady's disposal. She stopped in her compliments to dart a threatening look toward the door, where the boy who had been "named for the 'postle Paul" stood with his burden of dry sticks. He dropped them instantly, and came forward, and his mother as instantly resumed her smiling face. She could change her expression with remarkable facility.

Melicent fancied this boy at once, and promptly concluded a bargain to give a week's trial to him and his eldest sister. They were to go to "thehall," as Mrs. Patten politely called it, the next day, and begin their training. They would work for their food and clothing, and perhaps, after a while, when she should think them worthy, they might receive wages.

This settled, Miss Yorke and her brother departed, followed by Mrs. Patten's compliments to the door, and stared after by all the children. Joe's only movement on their going was to perform another courtesy like that with which he had received them.

"Poor souls! they are delighted to have their children with us," said Melicent, when they were out of hearing. "But I hope the mother won't come to see them often. Betsey says she is half-crazy."

"I respect her for it!" Carl exclaimed. "You can see that she has some talent and ambition, and that she has read some, though she is absurdly ignorant of the ways of the world. With such a husband, such a troop of children, and such poverty, I repeat I respect her for being crazy. She can't have a person to speak to but her own family, immured in those forest solitudes, as she says."

Mrs. Patten looked after them as long as she could see them, her face glowing with pride. Then she went into her house, went to the fireplace, and withdrew a pair of iron tongs that lay with red-hot tips in the coals there. "There is no need of them now," she said exultingly.

These tongs had been kept red during the last week for the better reception of any town officer who should venture to come for one of her children. Mrs. Patten did not by any means propose to submit tamely. Then she turned tragically, and faced her husband with a look of withering contempt.

"I was meant to be such a lady as that!" she exclaimed, with a grand gesture of the arm in the direction where Melicent Yorke had disappeared. "And yet, I sacrificed my birthright—fool that I was!—to marry you, Joe Patten!"

Joe shrank, and hugged the baby up to him. "I know you did, Sally!" he said deprecatingly—"I know you did!"

"And you never knew enough to appreciate me!" she continued in a tragic tone.

"I know I never did," answered Joe in a trembling voice—"I know it, Sally."

"Learn to respect me, then!" she said, drawing herself up. "Call me Mrs. Patten!"

"Yes, I will, I do, I have," whimpered Joe. "I—"

"Hold your tongue!" commanded his wife. "Paul, bring me those chips." And she proceeded to get supper.

Poor Sally Patten was not nearly so cruel as she appeared. In truth, she had never laid the weight of her hand upon her husband. But, then, he was always afraid she would.

TO BE CONTINUED.

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