pleasure. Father began to rub her cold hands, Sadie chafed her temples, mother pulled off her soaked and sodden shoes and stockings. Soon she opened her blue eyes and gasped twice, then in a faint, flute-like voice asked, "Where am I? Is this heaven?"

"No, my dear," said mother, holding a glass of warm milk to her lips and putting her strong, gentle arm under the girlish head, "it isn't heaven. Flyaway Farm, that stands on the hill near Oakhurst."

Its

"And it's not so far from being a heaven-like place," said father, as he sat down behind the hearth again.

Who was this girl and how came she to be alone in such a storm? None of our neighbors but would have known better than to venture forth in such weather as had threatened since morning. But this was a stranger, and when she came to herself she proved to be of a graceful bearing and of an air seldom seen in our plain countryside. As to her looks, she was not fashioned of common clay, but of the finest porcelain, the loveliest thing you ever dreamed of, and not past twenty years old.

"I am Dorothy Lester," she told us, "and I've come from Honolulu, where I lost my parents, to stay with my uncle, James Quincy. Uncle did not expect me so soon, but he knew I was on the way. I left the railroad at noon and came in the stage to the Corners. There I got out and the driver told me how to go on, but I lost my way in the snow."

'Abominable conduct in William Scott," said my father, "to let a girl, and a stranger, start on such a road with such a storm brewing."

"Well," said mother, soothingly, "you are here now, and God watched over you, dear child. Here you'll remain till the weather changes, and then we'll take you to your uncle's."

"Tis an ill wind that blows nobody good," said Louis, who was uncommonly pleased with the addition to our party.

Well, we had Dorothy with us four splendid shut-in days, when the snow walled us away from the world, and nobody came in or went out. She shared our happy New Year festivities, and joined our family prayers, and we treated her as if she were Noah's dove that had fluttered out of the tempest into the ark. We all felt sorrowful when the time came that father harnessed the gray horses to the old sleigh, piled in the robes, put a glowing foot-stove in the bottom for Dorothy's little feet, and then glided away with a guest we had learned to love.

"I wouldn't mind it so much," said Louis, as he turned mournfully from the door, "if her aunt, Miriam Quincy, were like anybody else-like our dear mother, for instance; but she is so cross and hateful!"

"Oh, well!" said Sadie, cheerfully, "Dorothy won't have to stay there always. Girls marry and go to homes of their own.'

Which was precisely what Dorothy did in another new year. Ask Louis what he thinks of the wife God brought him from over the sea, and sent to his arms on the wings of the wind. "A prudent wife," however you find her, "is from the Lord."

A Chat With Country Girls.

The brightest, cleverest and wittiest girl I ever met in my life was brought up in a remote hamlet among the Virginia mountains, a whole day's journey from the nearest railroad. Her own family, a few scattered neighbors, and the books she read and loved, had been her teachers, for she had never attended a school other than a very small one conducted by her mother. No young girl ever surprised and charmed me more than did this graceful and refined Salome, whose manner of entering a room would have done credit to the most finished belle. I mention entering a room, because one's ease in this common, every-day action, or one's awkwardness, show the observer to what degree of social training one has attained, and unthinking people sometimes fancy that social training or savoir faire, the knowing what to do and how to do it, is an affair of the town rather than of the country.

Salome would have impressed any one by the cordial and sincere gladness of her greeting, if you were a guest, and she stepped forward to welcome you. If it happened that a half-dozen kinsfolk and friends had driven across country and stopped at her home, she would have tactfully spoken to each, saying just the right word, asking for Aunt Mary and Uncle Thomas, remembering the ailing grandmother, and the babies. And when it came to serving refreshments, hers was the deft hand and the light foot; she knew how to set out a luncheon invitingly, she gave the right touch, she knew the values of little things. For jest and fun and repartee, few girls I have ever met have surpassed my mountain maiden, Salome.

Country girls have the advantage over their city cousins of an acquaintance with Nature in her several moods. They see great spaces of sky where we of the town are confined to little patches of blue, with here and there a star. They may, if they choose, know familiarly all the flowers which grow in their region, may classify the plants, and study the stones and rocks for miles. They may ride, climb, wheel; in short, engage in every form of outdoor sport, with ideal freedom, especially if they join their forces, three or four, or six or eight, girls going far afield together.

In many places it is not well for a girl to venture out on solitary excursions. A dog which loves his mistress is a good protector, but it is wise for a group of

friends to go on jaunts in company, or for a sister to have her brothers as a bodyguard, when going a distance from home over lonesome roads.

Country girls very naturally turn with longing eyes to the city, when the time arrives in which they desire to take some share in the world's work for themselves, in which, to put it plainly, they are anxious to earn their own living. Perhaps they desire to relieve their parents, knowing that father and mother have had a weary, upI hill time of it, in bringing the children to the present point.

There may be brothers to educate, or the farm may not be, clear of debt. On how many households a mortgage presses heavily, and how praiseworthy it is for a daughter to wish herself able to lift at least a small part of that burden.

Now, girls, let me very earnestly give you one bit of advice: Do not come from the safe shelter of your own home, and from your mother's side, into a great town filled with strangers, where you have as yet no foothold, and where your chances are uncertain, where it may be next to impossible to procure employment at a rate of payment at which you can be self-supporting. Do not be allured

by a weekly stipend which sounds large in a place where little actual money is required, but which will be very small when out of it must be squeezed room rent, and board, and car fare, and luncheon, and a nice well-fitting gown in which to

appear in office or salesroom. Stay where you are until you have an assured position awaiting you, and through acquaintances or relatives, or the Young Women's Christian Association, make full and definite arrangements as to the home in which you will be received as an inmate, and the people who will be your companions.

A young girl coming from her home for the first time should bring a letter of introduction from her pastor to a pastor of her own denomination, so that she may at once find friends in a Sunday-school or church. Should a girl from the country

find herself in town alone after dark, and without previous preparation, so that she is at loss what steps to take, she should ask a policeman to direct her to the clergyman whose house or church is nearest the place where she happens to be, and to him she should frankly tell her story and ask his counsel. If she can be directed to the Young Women's Christian Association, she will there find safe and judicious friends who will wisely advise her. Only an accident, however, should place a young girl in this position. As a rule, a girl coming to a strange place from the country should arrange beforehand to be met at ferry or station, and her friends at home should not trust anything so precious as a daughter to the chances of fate.

My motherly heart yearns over homesick girls, waifs in a crowd of alien people, none of whom care for them. Shy, and alone and anxious, they are greatly to be pitied, even when pluck and courage carry them on to victory.

Make ready for life by thoroughly mastering some art, or trade, or accomplishment, so that when the hour comes for entering the world's market they will be found ready. In every hamlet and village, in every home in the land, there is the opportunity to acquire something. Possibly it is not the thing we prefer, but to learn anything well is to make for yourself a stepping-stone to something better and higher. The greatest trouble in life is that there are so many incompetent and incapable people about, people who cannot be trusted to finish what they begin, or to do the least task as it should be done.

The young girl who has learned, for instance, the art of good housekeeping, who can make a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee, and a cake fit for the prize-table at a fair, will, by reason of that very knowledge, fill a position of trust more creditably than the untrained girl, even though it be in quite another sphere. Knowledge is power.

Dear country girl, do not hastily give up a place of honorable, though perhaps slenderly paid, service at home for one which seems an advance in salary and prestige among strangers. The advance may be only apparent. In an affair so important as this you must be sure beforehand that you are not about to make a mistake which may be irreparable.

Little Girl's Life in 1782.

One hundred and fifteen years ago a little girl named Mary Butt was living with her parents at the pretty rectory of Stanford, in England. She was a bright and beautiful child, and when she grew up she became Mrs. Sherwood, the writer of a great many charming stories for young people.

But nothing that she wrote is so entertaining as the story of her childhood, which, when she was an old lady, she told to please her grandchildren. I wonder how the girls who read this would endure the discipline which little Mary submitted to so patiently in 1782. From the time she was six years old until she was thirteen, she wore every day an iron collar around her neck and a back board strapped over her shoulders. This was to make her perfectly straight. Perhaps you may have seen here and there a very stately old lady who never was known to lean back in her chair, but who always held herself as erect as a soldier on duty. If so, she was taught, you may be sure, to carry herself in that way when she was a little girl. Poor Mary's iron collar was put on in the morning and was not taken off until dark, and, worse than that, she says: "I generally did all my lessons standing in stocks, with the collar around my neck. I never sat down on a chair in my mother's presence."

Her mother and herself were great readers, but you can count on the fingers of one hand all the books they had to read. "Robinson Crusoe," two sets of "Fairy Tales," the "Little Female Academy" and "Æsop's Fables," formed their entire library. They used to take "Robinson Crusoe " and seat themselves at the bottom of the wide staircase, with two heads bent over the same page together. Whenever they turned a leaf they ascended a step, until they reached the top, and then they began to go down again.

You will ask what sort of a dress this little girl wore over one hundred years ago. In the summer she wore cambric and in the winter a heavy wool dress, and at all times a pinafore—which was a great, loose apron, worn over everything else, and enveloping her from head to foot. It is pleasant to find that the iron collar did not take from little Mary the love of play and of dolls. Her special pet was a huge wooden doll, which was her constant companion. I think the little girls who compare their lives of to-day with that of the little girls of 1782 must be very glad they were not born in the last century.

Unconscious Revelations.

The other day, as I sat by my window, I was the observer of a little incident which set in motion the train of thought reaching from my quiet home to you,