his own interests. Miriam seemed ever present, and as grandma went about her household tasks she held imaginary conversations with her.

"I must do something to break this spell," she said to herself, "the neighbors will think I'm getting crazy. Oh! there comes old Bill Mason. Maybe a good long talk with him will bring me to my senses."

Bill Mason was the ancient type of tramp in those days called walkabouts. At the approach of cold weather he sought the shelter of the poor farm and emerged in the spring, taking up his accustomed route. He had been a welcome guest for the busy farmers' wives and daughters were kept advised. by him of all the news for miles around. But of late years his hearing had become defective and his. information was not always reliable, and some hard feeling had been the result of his mis-statements. However, he had grown cautious, and was reinstated in the good graces of his old benefactors, and although it was conceded that he was no longer very interesting, he was sure. of a meal and a night's lodging in a back chamber. Grandma gave him a hearty welcome.

"I'm gettin' on 'toward home," said he, "the weather's growin' chilly." Bill had no particular no particular views and was decidedly noncommittal when grandma sought information as to the neighbors, and she finally gave up in despair and voiced her own meditations, She went back to the time when she came as a bride to the farm.

"Why, there was just an oldfashioned well-sweep, but it was easier to get water then than after the curb and windlass was put in.

A good many old ways are the best."

She talked of the days when John and Miriam were little ones; when they started to school, and of their mature years. Then looking out of the window, she gave a start as she exclaimed, "There's father now."

Happily, Bill did not hear her. Then she told of her visit at John's. She glanced out of the window, thinking she saw him, then recovering herself she went on to say that Sybil was to be at the Sunday school convention in Weston and would make her a little visit as she would be so near.

"Yes," responded Bill, cheerfully, "I guess we'll have a snow squall soon." Her monologue, he thought, had been concerning the weather. She was glad to hear him say he intended to stay all night two or three miles farther on.

He had brought no relief. "I'm afraid I'm spoiled for living alone," moaned she.

When Sybil rode up to the house, she wondered at the closed windows and thought grandma could not be at home. The poultry were waiting around as if they had not been fed, and Tabby was on the window sill mewing to get out. After trying in vain to enter, Sybil went to the back door, which was unlocked. She passed into the kitchen, and a pitiful heap at the foot of the stairs told the story.

"Oh! Miriam," faltered grandma, "I knew you'd come."

Hours later, when grandma's broken bones had been bandaged, and an opiate had given her relief she told of her accident.

opened the cellar door instead of the entry door and stepped. It was in the night, and I didn't know much till I heard you." Then grandma dozed again until it grew dark, when she roused up and inquired anxiously, "Shall you have to go?"

"Oh! no, indeed," answered Sybil; "I'm going to stay and nurse you till you get well. Cousin Amos and Martha are here, and father is coming in the morning, so don't worry about anything."

"I'm so glad you came, Miriam I mean Sybil. You won't mind my calling you Miriam, will you, when I forget?" asked grandma, wistfully.

"No, indeed, grandma. I wish I could help you as Aunt Miriam could but I'll do all I can."

Many weary weeks of suffering and helplessness followed, which were hard to bear for an active, independent person like grandma. Sybil was patient and untiring and felt repaid when grandma declared that Miriam could not have done more. As grandma gained strength in mind and body she exerted herself to entertain her self-sacrificing granddaughter and one day surprised Sybil by asking her to bring a sandal wood box from her desk. This article of furniture was always a storehouse of mysteries in Sybil's mind. In her childhood, grandma occasionally brought from it treasures of raisins, peppermints and dainties to regale her little grandchildren but none of them had ever opened it. This box was filled with lace and old-fashioned jewelry.

"This ring," said grandma, taking up a plain ring, "was my greatgrandmother's wedding ring; and this opal and diamond and this

emerald ring my great-grandfather brought her from India. This lace is very fine and valuable, I suppose, but it's dreadfully yellow. I often thought I would bleach it. These gold beads were my grandmother's. Her name was Miriam and I named my daughter for her. When you were little I thought you were like her but I was afraid you were outgrowing her sweet ways. I was mistaken, I see," said grandma, with a fond smile.

"Bring those dresses out of that deep dresser," she continued; "they were my grandma's, too."

Among the heavy silks and poplins was a gray crepe.

Let

"Now, grandma," exclaimed Sybil, "this is just the very thing. me make you a gown of this and trim it with some of this lace. You'll need it before very long," said Sybil, blushing. "You'll look like a dear, old-time picture. shall be so fond of you."

I

While Sybil was talking she slipped the rings on grandma's hands, now soft and white from her enforced idleness. The pretty waves were coming back in grandma's hair, which had never grown gray; and the pink was tinting her cheeks. Sybil threw the soft folds of crepe about her, and draped some lace around her neck. Grandma's eyes drooped heavily. She was tired and slept. When she woke she was confronted by an elegantly attired lady in the looking glass.

"I never thought I could look like that," exclaimed grandma.

"At first I thought it was my grandmother and I was visiting her as I did a few times in the old manor house. I always liked pretty things, and I wanted to be educated

but grandfather lost his property and my father was unfortunate and everything was changed. You may put these things away, Sybil. I shall never want any of them. Folks think a good deal of old things nowadays. Some city people were here last summer and wanted to buy my old spinning wheel. They would have opened their eyes over these. They are all for you when I'm gone. I used to look them over and imagine what I might have been," said grandma, with a sigh. "I'll always wear my best clothes when I come to see you, and I guess you'll not feel ashamed of me. I've been intending to tell you to write to your father that I don't need that five hundred dollars. There wasn't as much damage as I expected and the crops turned out well, so you can have the bow window and new furni

ture." Then she said nothing more.

Spring came early, long before grandma was able to do any planning about farm work. She was gradually forced to the conviction that her days of activity and independence were over.

"I'll have to give up," she conceded, as Sybil helped her to her rocking chair by her favorite window where she had a view of the newly planted fields and the cattle browsing in the pastures, the garden with its promise of good things and its wealth of early bloom.

"Blessed girl," murmured grandma as she bade Sybil good-bye and watched her with dim eyes until she disappeared at the bend of the road.

Then rousing herself, she reached for her work bag, fervently exclaiming, "Thank the Lord! I can knit."

One's memory needs to be stirred by a fresh study, or a new view of a Country's Hero. We all feel we know all there is to be known about Abraham Lincoln, don't we?

But Alonzo Rothschild's word-painting of him as a "Master of Men" brings him so vividly before the mental vision, takes such a hold on the reader, that I feel as if I had never fully appreciated the special power that caused all associated with him to yield at last to his superior strength, both of muscle and of mind: it is a book with but one aim from the start; the author never once wanders from his theme.

In

The first chapter "A Sampson of the Backwoods" opens with these words: "The spirit of mastery moved Abraham Lincoln at an early age." And the closing para. graph fitly ends the story: "Lincoln was not beyond the pale of human harm. less than six months from the day of his triumph, the man before whom lea 'ers, great and small, had gone down in unbroken succession, went down himself before the only thing that ever wholly mastered him an assassin's bullet."

As a boy, he soundly thrashed any who attacked him, one or a crowd; no matter what the fight was about; a bitter quarrel or a taunting jest at his appearance; no matter to the homely-as-a-hedge-fence, lanky, uncouth giant, who dressed no better than a scarecrow in a cornfield but who with his preternaturally long arms and legs had so great an advantage that he could easily "lick" every antagonist.

He studied as he scrapped, with all his might and soon got beyond his teachers. What a precious relic, if it could have been preserved, would be the blade of the wooden fire-shovel, in lieu of slate, where his examples were laboriously scraped off by means of a drawing-knife, after they had been transferred to his carefully economized exercise-book.

Such prodigious strength! He had no need in boyish pranks to stealthily rob a hen house; for unaided he could quietly pick up and walk away with a chicken house that weighed fully six hundred pounds.

He is said to have once lifted a box of stones weighing a thousand pounds, and

could even in mature years lift and hold out at arm's length a heavy axe by the extreme end of the handle.

He naturally looked down upon little men; he spoke of Douglas as the "least man" he had ever seen.

He was amused at the profusion of wraps worn by the feeble A. H. Stephens of Georgia. As the wearer finally emerged, Lincoln remarked to the Secretary of State, "Seward, that is the largest shucking for so small a nubbin' that I ever saw.' Yet he appreciated sincerely the great, little man. Whenever he met a very tall man he always insisted on knowing which was the taller. Sumner alone firmly refused to stand up with him back to back to be measured. Sumner, he said, was "his idea of a Bishop."

But now we come to the real thing; the measuring of mental strength with Douglas and smaller political opponents: only to conquer them all. One opponent acknowledged that he knew more than all the candidates put together.

After a verbal encounter with showy, dressy, sarcastic Colonel Dick Taylor, he said, "I was a poor boy, and had only one pair of breeches to my back and they were buckskin. Buckskin, when wet and dried by the sun, will shrink; and my breeches kept shrinking until they left several inches of my legs bare; and whilst I was growing taller they were becoming shorter, and so much tighter that they left a blue streak around my legs that can be seen to this day."

Taylor had called him an "aristocrat!" Thus he took down one more! And so with them all! See Douglas, his old rival and fierce opponent step graciously forward at the Inauguration and hold the new silk hat which the Victor disliked to lay on the rough board floor.

Seward, for some time felt himself called upon to save his country from disuption and ruin; he patronized and advised Lincoln who took it good naturedly, and soon we find Seward writing to his wife. "Executive skill and vigor are rare qualities. The President is the best of us." The curbing of Stanton was more turbulent. Stanton ridiculed him in his acrid way as a "long, lank creature wearing a dirty linen duster for a coat, on the back