it was a great expense to her to have to educate Lydia away from home, and she didn't know how she would manage with Mary and Agnes; and then the new people have girls, the rich Smiths have two; and Rachel King would send Anna, I know."

"Did you mean to have a boardingschool?" Mrs. Barkley demanded.

"I mean an academy, dear Matty, on the lines of Miss Brace's; of course it never could be so fine, but I'll do my best. The young ladies may board, or they may return to their families at night, if their parents prefer." And then Miss Maria produced her trump card: "In fact, Matty, my dear, I have arranged an advertisement of the school, and it is to appear in the Globe next Saturday. This is a proof. (The gentleman to whom I gave my notice called it a 'proof'.)" She fumbled in a reticule at her side- a black bag with a band of flexible bead embroidery representing flowers and blue stars-and produced the notice; the bit of paper was flimsy and inky, and it had several typographical errors, but it displayed the advertisement, enclosed in a black border of inverted urns, which, in an upright position, formed the usual frame for the funeral notices in the Globe:

MISS MARIA WELLWOOD Begs Leave to Intimate to her Friends and the Inhabitants of Old Chester that She Intends to Open an Academy On Monday, 20th of November, for the Instruction of Young Ladies, in Grammar, Arithmetic, Geography (with the use of the Globes and Mapping), Chronology, Drawing, French, Painting on Velvet, Berthollet Art System, Painting on Glass, Mezzotinto, Alum Baskets, Wax Flowers, Plain and Ornamental Needle-Work.

Especial Attention will be given to
Deportment and Religion.

MISS WELLWOOD,
Locust Street, Old Chester.

"You know, Matty," Miss Maria said, eagerly, "we had all those things at Miss Brace's. Dear me can't you just see Miss Brace when she opened the classes in September, with those white curls and her turban! Oh, my gracious, how we girls used to shiver when she pointed her forefinger at us! I sha'n't do that, anyhow."

"Nobody would shiver if you did,"

Mrs. Barkley assured her. "Miss Brace was very genteel and dignified; but if you think, Maria Welwood, that you---”

"Oh," Miss Maria said, with eager humility, "of course not! but I've got my notes, and I'm going to say just the same things. I was looking over her remarks on art this morning-I took 'em down in my commonplace-book-and I've committed 'em to memory: The making of wax flowers is an art most suitable for young ladies; frost and snow may reign around us, and nip the tender blossoms in our gardens, but our homes may still be made elegant by delightful representations of Flora's children.' We began with the pomegranate flower," Miss Welwood ended, with a happy sigh of memory.

a

"Well," Mrs. Barkley said, morosely, "I don't believe anybody would pay twenty-five cents to learn how to make pomegranate flower, nowadays; I wouldn't. Anyhow, I don't believe you remember it, Maria. I tell you the only thing for you to do is to come here. Now, Maria-I-I-wish you would," said Mrs. Barkley, with a sob.

But Miss Welwood only patted the hard old hand, and said, cheerfully: "Of course I shall have to brush up a little. I wasn't quite sure about the alum baskets, but I tried one to-day, and it came out pretty well. History is the only thing I'm nervous about, but Rose is pretty fresh in that. As for arithmetic, of course I'll have all the answers in the book, so I can tell when the sums are not right."

"Well-" began Mrs. Barkley, slowly, and then burst out: "suppose Rose were to get married? You couldn't get along by yourself, so what's the use of beginning?"

Rose get married?" said Miss Maria. "Well-I don't see any prospect just now; not but what any gentleman might be glad to have her."

"If she did, you'd go and live with her," said Mrs. Barkley, decidedly, "so why not both of you come here until then?"

"I wouldn't think of living with her," cried Miss Maria, with spirit; “no, indeed! If my darling Rose gets married, and leaves the academy, I'll-I'll just get something else to do. Or maybe by that time I'll have brushed up so I can keep along by myself. But no young gentleman is waiting on Rose. Why, there aren't any young gentlemen in Old Chester!"

Mrs. Barkley took off her spectacles, and looked at Miss Maria sidewise. "Suppose Ezra took a fancy to Rose?" "To-Rose?" Miss Welwood looked at her open-mouthed.

"Yes, Rose," Miss Barkley repeated, with a snap. "That's what I said." "Rose!" Miss Maria faltered. And then she said, with a certain sharpness, "He's twenty-five years older than Rose."

“Well, well,” Mrs. Barkley interrupted crossly, "I only said 'suppose.""

Miss Maria, with the color hot in her face, said again something of age and youth; and, anyhow, they never, either of them, thought of such a thing!"

"Well," said Mrs. Barkley, "very likely I was mistaken. I was only supposing, anyway. But there's another thing (somebody's got to talk sense to you!)-I don't believe you'd get pupils enough to pay for your shoestrings. Miss Brace was very superior, of course, but schools are very different now-I've been told."

"True," Miss Welwood admitted; "too true; and it is high time that things should improve. If I may be the humble instrument in educating young women as we were educated, Matty, to respect their parents, and honor their God, and learn how to walk across a room properly, and remember dates-(Do you recollect, 'Now Semiramis, Beautiful Sinner-that stood for 1050 B.C., you know-N. S. B.S. Think how I've remembered that out of Miss Brace's old chronology)—if I can teach them these things, I shall feel that the Lord had a purpose in taking away my money."

"The Lord!" cried Mrs. Barkley, angrily; "don't put it on the Lord's shoulders!"

Afterwards, when she repeated this conversation to her brother-in-law, Mrs. Barkley added that it was bad enough to think that the Lord was responsible for creating that Charles!—though maybe He isn't," said Mrs. Barkley, in a deep bass; "maybe it's Somebody Else!" Which bold theology was quite startling, even to a man who had gone so far towards infidelity as to say that the size of a whale's throat would have precluded the passage of a man of average size-" And we are not told in Holy Writ that Jonah was a dwarf," Mr. Ezra had said, in one of those rationalistic flights which so shocked Old Chester.

"That Charles!" said Mrs. Barkley.

"Think of Maria, at her time of life, having to earn her own living!"

Mr. Ezra frowned and sighed. "I fear," he said, "that Miss Welwood will not find that appreciative demand for-"

"An academy?" Mrs. Barkley finished. Of course not!"

"-demand for alum baskets," Mr. Ezra continued. He had not meant to finish his sentence in that way, but it was as good as any other; and it was his own. 'But I cannot but admire," he proceeded, "Miss Maria's desire for independence; it commands my respect. Were you aware that the number of school-teachers in the United States was-"

"Ezra," said his sister-in-law, slowly, looking at him over her spectacles, “to be perfectly open: if you are thinking of settling, I must say that Rose is a girl in a thousand. Dear me! dear me! I don't know what men want nowadays!" And Mr. Ezra listened.

VI.

Mr. Barkley came home from his office early in the afternoon. He had a careworn expression natural to a man who has a heavy task before him; he stopped to look at the paroquets, climbing with beak and claw up the wires of the cage and squeaking shrilly at his approach; but he did not give them any sugar or scratch their heads. He was thinking to himself that in two hours-it would be over; he would be back again, and could sit peacefully down in his arm-chair, and let the parrots walk about over his shoulders and knees.

"I do not," he thought, "understand this feeling of enlargement in the region of my throat. And my respiration is hastened. I think I am indisposed. At such a moment I should be especially calm. Perhaps it would be well to arrange the interview to some extent."

Any immediate action is a relief; and Mr. Ezra went up stairs to his room, to get his brief together, so to speak. He dressed slowly, and just before he put on his coat he opened his watch, and standing before the little tipping glass on his high bureau, so that he might watch his expression, timed himself.

"I will open the subject by remarking upon the weather. 'These October days are very agreeable.' 'Yes, Mr. Ezra,' she will reply. I trust your occupations do not keep you in-doors too much? I will

say. Here I might introduce some interesting data as to exercise. (Allow a minute.) Then I will try and bring up financial matters, and speak, perhaps, of the hardships of life. (Allow five minutes.) And then I must "-the perspiration started to Mr. Ezra's brow-"I must remark that I should be pleased to smooth the path of life for her feet. Ending with the request that she should accept my hand."

Mr. Barkley looked at his watch. Fourteen minutes. Very good. Her reply would no doubt take another minuteallowing for the ladylike hesitation which would probably precede it. Mr. Ezra grew more care worn every minute.

However, he had to go. It was already a good half-hour later than he had planned to start. So he took his stick, and set his teeth, and opening the front door, let himself out into the still October sunshine. His sense of the seriousness of his object imparted dignity to his rotund and somewhat jaunty figure; he wore a full-skirted frock-coat, and his high bell-crowned hat was set just a little on one side. As he walked he kept repeating to himself the form of his proposal. When he reached Miss Welwood's gate he had only gotten so far as the "hardships of life," and he debated with himself for a moment as to whether he had not better walk on and finish his silent rehearsal before he put it to the touch. But while he stood hesitating, Rose came down the garden path, and when she saw him there came that flicker of fun into her eyes that was so disconcerting to Mr. Ezra. "You'll find Cousin Maria in the parlor, Mr. Barkley," she said. "Oh, quite so, quite so,' returned Mr. Barkley, alarmed, but so polite that before he knew it he found himself ushered into the parlor and into Miss Welwood's presence.

66

Miss Welwood was seated at a spindlelegged table drawn close to the window, struggling, it appeared, to make wax flowers. She was deeply depressed. Her advertisement was to come out in two days, and the academy was to open in less than a month, and here she was brushing up" her accomplishments, only to discover that her hand had lost its cunning; for even Miss Maria could see that the heavy dark red spirals stuck to shaky green stems were as unlike the flowers she meant to make as the painty smell of the wax was unlike the fragrance of roses. Her fingers

were clumsy and trembling, and a dull feeling of fright was growing up in her breast. Suppose she should find she had forgotten the use of the globes? Suppose that she could not remember Berthollet's method? She looked up and saw Mr. Ezra stumbling among the chairs and tables, for the room was shadowy, even though the autumn nights had thinned the vines about the windows, and some of the broad five-fingered leaves of the Virginia-creeper were stained crimson. Miss Maria put down her wax-work with a faint sigh; she was awakening to a horrible sense of inability to meet a responsibility, and it was a relief to put it aside for a moment. Why, Mr. Ezra," she said, "it is indeed a compliment to have a call from a gentleman in the afternoon, especially from you! How is dear Matty?"

Mr. Ezra Barkley took off his hat and wiped his forehead. "I fear I am interrupting your delightful work," he said, politely.

I am

"Oh, no, indeed," she said. "You couldn't interrupt me, Mr. Ezra. making wax roses. I hope you think they're-pretty good?" She looked at him. wistfully.

"Oh yes; just so; quite so; most beautiful;" he assured her, kindly. "These -ah-October days are very agreeable, Miss Maria?"

"Yes," she agreed, "I suppose they are, but I've had a good deal on my mind; I have not noticed them, I am afraid. You know I am going to open an academy, Mr. Ezra?"

"Yes," he said, eagerly; this was more direct than he could have hoped-the reference to exercise might be omitted, and he could proceed at once to financial matters and the hardships of life. This he did, with several statistical allusions to which Miss Welwood listened with deep attention.

"Dear me," she said, "if I only had some of your learning, Mr. Ezra, I am sure my academy would be successful!"

"Well, now, for the matter of the academy," said Mr. Barkley, changing color violently, "may it not be possible that some other arrangement may be made? In fact, I had in mind a-ah-plan which would make it possible for you to give it up. It is of this I came to speak this afternoon." (Here Mr. Ezra looked at his watch.)

"If you mean coming to live with

was right! Everybody is sometimes right, by chance; and I think, after all, that this is the best arrangement. But why didn't I think of it myself? I was a perfect fool!"

As for Rose, the gayety leaped back into her voice, and she laughed with all the old flashing looks and rapid words, and declared that she was ready to say, "Bless you, my children," right away.

Mrs. Barkley nearly swooned, she told Miss Welwood afterwards, when Ezra came home and told her; and she added that, to be perfectly frank, Ezra was as stubborn as a mule. But upon my word," said Mrs. Barkley, "I believe he

But all the same she held on to a quiet plan of her own in regard to some work Dr. Lavendar had proposed for her, which later was, it must be admitted, a blow to

Charles was delighted. He sent his aunt a wedding-present, bought from her last loan to him, and he wrote her a most beautiful letter, which he ended by protestations of unaltered affection, and the statement that, as things had turned out, it proved just what he had said: "The Lord would provide!"

A

LL matters connected with the sea tend to have, in a greater or less degree, a distinctly specialized character, due to the unfamiliarity which the sea, as a scene of action, has for the mass of mankind. Nothing is more trite than the remark continually made to naval officers, that life at sea must give them a great deal of leisure for reading and other forms of personal culture. Without going so far as to say that there is no more leisure in a naval officer's life than in some other pursuits-social engagements, for instance, are largely eliminated when at sea- there is very much less than persons imagine; and what there is is broken up by numerous petty duties and incidents, of which people living on shore have no conception, because they have no experience. It is evident that the remark proceeds in most cases from the speaker's own consciousness of the unoccupied monotony of an ocean passage, in which, unless exceptionally observant, he has not even detected the many small but essential functions discharged by the officers of the ship, whom he sees moving about, but the aim of whose movements he does not understand. The passenger,

as regards the economy of the vessel, is passive; he fails to comprehend, often even to perceive, the intense functional activity of brain and body which goes on around him-the real life of the organism.

In the progress of the world, nautical matters of every kind are to most men what the transactions of a single ship are to the passenger. They receive impressions, which they mistake for opinions— a most common form of error. These impressions are repeated from mouth to mouth, and having the common note of superficial observation, they are found to possess a certain resemblance. So they serve mutually to fortify one another, and to constitute a quasi public opinion. The repetition and stereotyping of impressions are greatly forwarded by the system of organized gossip which we call the press.

It is in consequence of this, quite as much as of the extravagancies in a certain far from reputable form of journalism, that the power of the press, great as it unquestionably still is, is not what it should be. It intensifies the feeling of its own constituents, who usually take