only to receive visits from the Virgin, but also to be endowed with the power of curing sick persons by the laying on of hands. Surnamed "La Voyante," she is the wonder of the country round, and crowds flock to her cottage to be healed of their diseases. One man, who had been stricken with paralysis for many years, repaired to Fontet a few weeks ago to be operated upon. The process is thus described by two witnesses, one of them a doctor, who are ready to attest the truth of their account: A medal of St. Benedict was pressed against the patient's neck, and he was sprinkled with holy water. A terrible crisis then ensued, for he fell to the ground in convulsions, uttering loud cries. But in a few seconds the Virgin appeared, the sufferer became immediately calm, and recited the litanies to her in a very devout tone. Although not quite cured on the spot, he was so much better that he was able to walk, and the Virgin assured "La Voyante " that he would be completely delivered from an evil spirit in a few days. In order that this evil spirit might not enter into the body of "La Voyante," it was deemed prudent to sprinkle her also with holy water, and, as the writers of the account remark, the devil has so great an objection to holy water that he would certainly have testified to his presence in the chamber by some convulsions had he been lodged there. It is to the credit of Cardinal Donnet, Archbishop of Bordeaux, that he has forbidden his clergy to take any part in these "manifestations," for which, however, the promoters of them console themselves by reflecting that "the Blessed Virgin will place the truth beyond doubt when the proper time arrives."

A WRITER in Tinsley's Magazine, speaking of architecture, says very sensibly: "It is a very great mistake to suppose that the study of art must necessarily be technical and esoteric. Many persons speak of paintings, sculptures, and the like, as though none but artists were competent to appreciate them. The judgment of outsiders' is repelled as being necessarily associated with ignorance of the subject, and we are warned not to meddle with that which we do not understand. This, however, is the result of a misconception of the proper functions of art. No doubt technical merits cannot be properly understood but by those who have had some practical experience in the matter; but a work of art has, or should have, other characteristics than those of mere manipulative skill — it should display some of the grace which purifies, and the thought which teaches; the artist should have something to say, besides possessing the faculty of expression. And this something should be comprehensible by all who bring to it ordinary intellectual powers and unblunted moral sensibilities. Art would be only the idle offspring of a listless luxury if it had no higher function than merely to amuse; and on the other hand, the results attained would be altogether incommensurate with the labor bestowed upon it, if its teaching were reserved for the learned, and its refining influence exerted only upon those already refined. Practically, works of art are submitted to the verdict of the public, and it is therefore strange that so many persons should be ready to affirm that public to be an incompetent judge. It is unfortunately obvious that a great proportion of the visitors to our art exhibitions form foolish opinions about what they see there; but this is not because they are incompetent to do better, but because they do not know what it is that they ought to look for in a work of art, and accordingly look for something else which they do not understand, and proceed to talk about it. The thought and meaning of the picture or carving are intended for every one; the mode in which the artist has expressed his ideas is not always appreciable to those who have never tried to do likewise."

possession of the simple secret which would introduce the millennium. We have only to swallow their nostrum, whether it refers to drainage, to electoral reform, or to universal philosophy, and the world will go right ever afterwards. It may be disputed whether, on the whole, such people do more harm by their stupidity, or more good by incessantly hammering upon a single point. It would be ungrateful to ignore the services often rendered by men who, by concentrating their energies upon a single point, have succeeded in at least forcing some important question upon the indifference of mankind. But it seems to be an error to speak of such persons as possessing an idea, even in the popular sense of that vaguest of philosophical words. All that they can really be said to have assimilated is a fragment of an idea- a mere formula detached from the system of thought to which it owed its real value. To have an idea at all a man must have something like a general theory of the world, or at least of that department of speculation with which he is principally concerned. The so-called man of one idea does not understand the principles of his science, or he would appreciate the relative value of his own doctrine and be unwilling to apply it in season and out of season. He has simply caught, or been caught by, some incidental corollary from a wider principle, and goes about measuring all things in heaven and earth by his private foot-rule. The more accurate mode of classifying mankind would be into the un-idead and the one-idead. Really to possess a single idea and to be capa ble of impressing it upon the world at large is to be a man of genius. To possess two or more ideas with the same completeness is to be one of those rare intellectual giants who scarcely appear more than once in a century."

A STREET IDYL.

WIND-SHAKEN lilies, silver-belled and sweet,
Pearls floating down the dusty London street;
Embodied dreams; a resurrection bright
Of some foregone, forgotten, lost delight.
Who drew them from their dusky, cool retreat,
Where they could hear the Spring's first pulses beat
In deep green woods, or by the silvery gleam
Of some slow rippling, forest-shadowed stream?
Where are they drifting in that snowy dress?
To make death tender with their loveliness;
Or stir within some weary, death-cold breast
Thoughts which the dull, hard world had laid to rest.

Will they reflect their image clear that lies
In the soft depths of little children's eyes?
Or will those chalices of silver bells
Imprison tears within their fragrant cells?

Oh, myriad-voiced! beneath the summer sky,
To some a song, to some a bitter cry,
Pass to your mission, while I hear the beat
Of angel footsteps flutter from the street.

TWO ROBBERS.

WHEN Death from some fair face
Is stealing life away,

All weep, save she, the grace
That earth shall lose to-day.

When Time from some fair face
Steals beauty year by year,
For her slow fading grace
Who sheds, save she, a tear?

And Death not often dares

To wake the World's distress; While Time, the cunning, mars Surely all loveliness.

Yet though by breath and breath Fades all our fairest prime, Men shrink from cruel Death, But honor crafty Time.

EVERY SATURDAY:

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THE MINOR LIBRARIAN.

THE Census Report - that mine in which any one may dig in any direction and bring out every variety of sociallyscientific mineral— gives the number of libraries of all classes in the United States, other than private, as fiftysix thousand and fifteen, and on another page counts the librarians in the United States as two hundred and thirteen; or, if we have done our sum rightly, one librarian to every two hundred and sixty-two and two hundred and nine two hundred and thirteenths libraries (for ease to the eye we add parenthetically 262), a division of labor and responsibility which would fill us with dismay if we were in the habit of finding the jewel of consistency in the Census Report. The inference most easy to be drawn is that besides the two hundred and thirteen persons who represent the Librarian Profession, there are thousands who exercise the functions of a librarian without getting into the Census Report at all. This is not so very strange, since the Census of 1860, if we remember rightly, had but Arkansas was his one poet in its table of occupations, home, - and even he has disappeared from the last report; and yet, if there are no poets in the country, where does all the poetry come from? It is plain that it could not all have been imported nor all produced by the man in Arkansas, and we are thrown back upon the explanation that there are no professional poets, but that the occupation is combined with some other pursuit.

So with the librarians who distribute books from those libraries not served by the two hundred and thirteen persons specially classified. They are school-teachers, clerks in bookstores, ladies too domestic in their tastes to register themselves as librarians in any census; and it is of this large class that we would say a few words, speaking of them in that polite third person which allows one to be gracious without stammering, and to fire at the mark while seeming to look the other way.

The reading class in our country, apart from those who merely read their daily paper, is mainly composed of boys and girls at the beginning, and young men and young women at the end; that is to say, the years of youth from ten to twenty-five are the reading years, the leisure time of the mind, the growing time of the soul. During those years the young American, in school or out, and out of factory or shop, browses in literary pastures and provides for such education of the intellectual faculties as books and periodicals are likely to give. It is this class that throngs the public libraries of the cities and towns, devours like an army of locusts every green thing in brown covers that the Sunday-school libraries afford, and takes possession of every small collection of books that is a circulating library, whether it be free or accompanied by a tax. The magazines and weeklies, which have done so much of late years to bring reading matter into the homes of all classes, have indeed supplied much of the reading that the young have received, but no library has ever languished because of home reading. The communities

where magazines flourish best are those which support libraries, and the libraries themselves, by the accompaniment of reading-rooms, render magazines accessible to many who do not subscribe for them individually.

Now these small libraries, whose number is legion, connected with schools, with churches and Sunday-schools, with public institutions of various kinds, with bookstores, in the form of book clubs, as private enterprises, in whatsoever shape, the great, unorganized repositories of literature throughout the country, are superintended by librarians sometimes paid, perhaps oftener unpaid, whose names may not be known outside of the village or neighborhood in which they live, who never appear in census tables or issue reports, it may be, yet who are brought into active, living, and most important relations to the great class of readers of which we have been speaking. They are the unmagisterial teachers of the young, and it is within bounds to say that their influence may be commensurate with that of the professional teachers.

For it is plain to all how large a part of our later education is through reading, independent of study, and the books which one chooses early in life for friends make the It was a strongest impression upon the facile character. stirring though pitiful tale which we once heard from the lips of a man whose younger brother had fallen into the clutches of the devil-fish literature, whom he was extricating by helping him in painfully slow degrees through the stages of sensational literature up into the wholesome region of honest, hearty books. Many a time have we thought of it, and it comes afresh to us now as we think of this great body of minor librarians. throughout the country, to whom is given the opportunity of guiding the taste for reading of thousands of boys and girls.

The consideration makes clear also the duty lying upon those who administer even small libraries, that they should select for librarian not the most helpless person in the community, but the most helpful. Choose from the class, especially of women waiting their opportunity to work, the intelligent, quick-witted, and sympathetic one who knows a good book from a poor one, who can tell where to find the facts for which boys and girls are hungry, to whom a book is a living thing that it were well to know, and who has the aptitude for such mental diagnosis as will fit her to take down such and such a book, and say to the eager or distracted or ennuyé borrower, "This is what you want." If the publisher may do something toward keeping poor books in manuscript, and sending out good books to take their chance in the world, if the bookseller may lend his hand to the wandering purchaser with no purpose more fixed than to dispose somehow of his devoted dollar, how large an opportunity, how golden a one, lies with the minor librarian who is not merely an official, keeping an exact account of books borrowed, but a friend to the borrower, lending the weight of experience and good judgment and taste to turn the scales in favor of sound, honest literature !

NOTES.

The American Social Science Association is to hold its general meeting in New York about the close of May, and preparations are making for a very full presentation of topics. The president of the Association, Mr. George William Curtis, will give an address; Dr. Woolsey will read a paper on some topic of International Law, David A. Wells on "Taxation," President White of Cornell on "The Relation of National and State Governments to Advanced Education," President Gilman of the University of California on "The Commerce of the Pacific Coast by Sea

and Land as influencing the Future of California and of the United States," Mr. W. W. Greenough, one of the Trustees of the Boston Public Library, on " Public Libraries," Dr. J. Foster Jenkins of New York, formerly General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission, on "Tent Hospitals," Z. R. Brockway, Esq., of Detroit, on "The Reformation of Prisoners," Willard C. Flagg, Esq., of Moro, Ill., on "The Farmers' Movement in the Western States;" and other gentlemen scarcely less known, and equally qualified to treat their special subjects, will aid in making what promises to be a very interesting meeting. The managers of this Association have shown excellent judgment in the selection of vital topics and in assigning them to thoroughly competent writers.

We mention some of the notable recent English publications not likely to be reprinted in this country. W. W. Hunter's "Famine Aspects of Bengal Districts; " Mr. Hunter's "Annals of Rural Bengal," published a few years since, inclines one to value this new work. On the same subject, which appeals so powerfully now to Englishmen, is Rt. Hon. Sir H. Bartle E. Frere's "On the Impending Bengal Famine: How it will be met, and how to prevent future Famines in India." The "Life and Miscellaneous Essays of Henry Thomas Colebrooke," the well-known Oriental scholar, has just been published. E. H. Palmer, author of the lively" Desert of the Exodus," has prepared for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge A History of the Jewish Nation from the Earliest Times to the Present Day." "Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox; the Opposition under George the Third," by W. F. Rae, whose "Westward by Rail" was reprinted here, and who translated Taine's "Notes on England," is highly spoken of, and from the political complexion of the writer would probably be agreeable reading on this side of the water. Among the small but valuable class of thoughtful writings upon theological and religious topics should be mentioned "Catholic Thoughts on the Church of Christ an 1 the Church of England; by the late Frederic Myers," a book originally printed only for private circulation, and then commended by Dean Alford, in a letter since printed in his memoirs. If Mr. Myers is the person of that name who wrote "St. Paul," a poem reprinted, we think, by Randolph a few years ago, one would look with interest for this little work, for his St. Paul," though inclined a little to the shriek in verse, was worth more in its failure than many successes. "A Brief Memoir of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, with Selections from her Correspondence and other Unpublished Papers," by Lady Rose Weigall, should also be mentioned in this list of books likely to receive attention, though it is more likely than the others to be reprinted in America.

us.

- The panic, it seems, was not altogether an ill wind for The Athenæum reveals the fact that it led to the withdrawal of proposals made to many Englishmen of letters who were invited to deliver lectures in the United States. So we shall not have so many lions let loose on us as if we were in a more edible condition. Curiously enough another kind of lion is affected by the panic, for the dreadful American who is making Europe so uncomfortable has taken to bidding against the Zoo, the pet name by which Londoners call their Zoological Gardens, for the possession of such wild beasts as remain on this civilized earth. Somebody once said that it was a surprise to him nobody in Chicago had been to Egypt and come back possessed with the idea of building a bigger pyramid than any that could be found in the pampered Old World, and it is very certain that the zeal of Americans to possess themselves of such tapirs and rhinoceroses as yet remain has made fancy stock of these aristocratic beasts.

The recent rumor that the dodo had been found, sent a thrill through the heart of many a showman and museum collector here.

....

-If we must put up with native lecturers, we can at least boast of some rare specimens. It is hard to say sometimes, to be sure, whether it is the lecturer or the reporter of the lecture that should enjoy the glory. A "lady lecturess," as the emphatic reporter calls one of them, that there may be no sort of doubt as to her standing, has been speaking, upon what topic the report does not say; but it does say much of the style." She has one of the most poetic minds," the reporter says, 66 we ever came in contact with. . . . . Her effort last evening was purely feminine — such an effort as we could imagine coming from a feminine Milton. . . . . True, there is little of the practical in the lecture, but there is so much soul and such a wealth of imagination such deep, drawn fountains of sentiment and such halos of metamorphical radiance so much that is womanly and true to herself and her sex-such abnegation of woman's superiority to man in his true sphere, yet such holy tribute to woman's superiority to man in her own domain, that we can well forego the strength of the strong-minded for the sake of the delicacy with which she endows her ideal woman." After taking breath, and perhaps a glass of water from a "drawn fountain," the reporter, or perhaps the lady reporteress, goes on: "Her style is really too beautiful, if such a thing be possible. Beauty seems to envelop every sentiment of hers so completely that when she reaches a period, one finds the idea smothered in rhetorical flowers. We see the cord of truth upon which she enters; but she so bewinds that cord with flowers" but the spectacle of a lady lecturess entering on a cord, which is clearly visible, shocks us, even though it is bewound with flowers.

- There has been a joint resolution introduced in Congress providing for a council on matters of art, consisting of John Durand, George A. Baker, Sanford R. Gifford, Eastman Johnson, and H. K. Brown, to which is to be submitted, in connection with the joint committee on the library, all designs and proposals for paintings or statues ordered by Congress, a majority of whom in connection with the committee shall decide upon the artist to be selected, as well as upon the subject matter of such designs or proposals, except when otherwise expressed in the law authorizing the same. No compensation attaches to the service except ordinary expenses in going to and returning from Washington. The plan is certainly a very sensible We only wish their powers might be extended so as to be retroactive, we believe that is the right word, it looks finely, with the privilege of relegating to the Congressional Dust Heap, if there is one, such paintings and statues as now frighten away art from the Capitol.

one.

-The fire at the Pantechnicon in London has brought out several letters in the Times, and good use is made in them of Mr. Joseph Bird's "Protection against Fire," the uncommon common-sense of which seems to have struck Englishmen. It is a pity that our American common-sense should be crossed by a streak of childish admiration for big things which makes us look with unwise scorn upon the simple expedients for preventing fire which Mr. Bird's book advocates. Perhaps if Mr. Bird would design a little hand-engine which should have an attachment for registering the number of pailsful used by each engine, or some such elaborate nonsense, people would look with more favor upon his simple contrivances.

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VOL. I.]

HIS TWO WIVES.1

BY MARY CLEMMER AMES.

How beautifully babies are born in books! Little Arthur and Ethel glide gracefully upon the human scene, not incommoding their pretty mamma by so much as a wrinkle. Not thus are the actual Jackeys and Janeys born. We try to play with it, to poetize it; nevertheless it remains, to strike terror soon or late to almost every woman's heart, the most awful fact of existence save that of death, the fact of human birth. One must wonder sometimes how an omnipotent God can stay placidly in heaven and listen to the cries of the daughters of earth, at such cost of foreboding and fear, of weariness and anguish, is every child of woman born.

Little Cyril was a poem till he came, but he ceased to be one to his father from the moment that he uttered his first scream. Cyril King had his "mystic summer” such as that of which a poet father sings. It was enchanting to talk of the coming child, holding the hand of its mother in the twilight and the starlight, with the fragrance of the garden pervading their senses, and the great Sound sweeping before them like a phantom sea. But from the moment that he appeared, little Cyril himself seemed to shut everything romantic and ideal out of sight.

I am aware that this is dreadful heresy to utter about a first baby. But it is the first baby that is the disorganizer. Eleven afterwards will not make such a revolution in a home as the one who came first. Many a father and mother who have lived to find the very life of their life in their first-born child look back with a sickening memory to the first year of his existence. Often in that year the child is a barrier instead of a bond between two who were happy lovers until he came. The young mother, especially if she be motherless herself, and her baby sickly, lives in constant terror lest the flickering life which she holds so closely yet so tremulously to her own will go out. She loves her baby, oh, how utterly! yet ten chances to one she does not know how to take care of it, or in any emergency what to do with it or for it. Every mother of many children, every maiden aunt who visits it to see what it is like, to determine whether it has its father's nose, its mother's eyes, or whether it bears a legible resemblance perhaps to some detested grandparent -every one has her own unfailing remedy for baby's phthisic, colic, croup, teeth, and "worms," till with the administration of all by its distracted mother, the wonder is that baby manages to live at all. How much of anguish and effort it costs, just to live in this world!

1 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by II. O HOUGHTON & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

[No. 14.

And in all the brief story there is nothing so piteous as the feeble struggle of human infancy for life.

After the manner of most first babies little Cyril screamed away the first six months of his existence. The first baby is almost always a nervous child. All the qualms and fears and terrors which its girl mother weeps through in its prenatal life are repeated and perpetuated in her child. Little Cyril seemed to be no only in pain but in actual fright at the new world in which he found himself. According to the tenets of ideality and poetry he should have been a large, fair, serene-eyed child, born out of musing hours and moonlit rambles. In reality he was most acutely organized, as the first children of very young and sensitive mothers are sure to be. He was over-shrinking, timid, and tearful from his birth. A long-tried nurse would have declared him emphatically " a most uncomfortable child."

He was most beautiful to Agnes; nevertheless, at least half of the time she did not know what to do for him. She had never had the care of children. Instinctively they belonged to her, and she to them, but she could only learn to minister wisely to their minute needs, by the actual process of experience like that of her life long nursing of her plants. Long before she could hold him in her arms, her large, ever-asking eyes would follow the nurse hour by hour, just to see and to learn what she did for baby. But when she actually began to minister to him herself, her fear lest she should not do it well gave little Cyril himself a feeling that he was in insecure hands, and he accordingly screamed louder than ever.

His

Nothing could exceed the tenderness of little Cyril's father for the first weeks of the child's tiny life. summer vacation, deferred till autumn, Cyril spent in the sick-room of Agnes. In time it was his strong arms which carried her up and down stairs, and which placed her in the invalid's chair in sight of the waves that she loved. He read to her by the hour from their favorite books, while little Cyril slept, or was lulled to peace in the cradle-like arms of his de-p-bosomed nurse. Never before had Agnes had Cyril so unreservedly to herself. Never had he seemed so gentle, so infinitely dear. What a recompense were he and his love for all suffering. Agnes came back to life, pale, wan, and weak, as very young mothers are apt to do, yet feeling that she had just lived through the happiest, the most perfectly blissful month of all her life.

Then the world of work called Cyril back. When he began to come again daily from his office, then he realized for the first time that the month which he had just spent at home bridged the old life and the new. The first evening of his returning, while entering his own gate it struck him aghast, for the first time, that the old life, that life in itself so sweet and brief and precious, was gone forever. And as a sudden baby shriek struck his ear from within, he was equally conscious that the

new life disappointed and irritated him. No soft-eyed, delicate girl in a garden hat awaited him at the gate, or ran eagerly down the village street to meet him under the elms. No delicious notes of welcome floated to him from the still open windows on the bland October day, as he hastened up the garden walk. Already they were of the past. He could have borne that baby shriek which reached him down the street, had it not foretold so much more. Of course Agnes was with her baby, and with her baby she would stay. She wanted to be with Cyril, but baby did not like his new nurse and would cry, and if baby would cry Agues must be with him, even if she could not do him an atom of good.

As time went on, if by rare chance Agnes was able to come down to greet Cyril as of old, they could scarcely meet before baby would set up his sudden, piercing wail; for the hour of his father's return little Cyril seemed assiduously to devote to his evening colic.

No matter what absorbing theme Cyril had struck upon, Agnes would cry instantly,

"Oh my baby! Cyril, come to baby! We will talk by and by."

In a moment more, unless he followed after, Cyril found himself alone, to remain in that melancholy state for an indefinite length of time. If he went after Agnes he felt called upon to assist her in wooing back peace, to carry baby, to pat him on the back, and to fulfil as far as possible the duties of a subordinate nurse. It gradually but surely dawned upon him that the son and heir which he had so desired was a minute yet mighty tyrant, who ruled the house and managed to make its inmates decidedly uncomfortable if not unhappy, for at least two thirds of the time. If he had gained a son it was at the cost of his daily sweet companion, his lover, his wife, his never-failing minister. Not that Agnes loved Cyril less. She loved him more, if possible. But she was young, weak, and ignorant, and her motherhood overpowered her. She was possessed by her new relation. She was absorbed by her child to such a degree that she seemed to have nothing of life left for herself, her husband, or any thought or thing else. This absorption was so utter, she had never realized how little she had remaining for Cyril. She did not know that her being, physical, mental, and spiritual, was drained by her child. She had no life but in baby. In her, all thought and emotion centred in the moaning little creature in her lap. Cyril lived in a world unknown to her. She did not comprehend this world very well, even when she had nothing to do but to listen to the stories which he told her about it in the evening hours, the great, rushing world of business, and affairs of rivalry, ambition, and hot pursuit. She used to like to have Cyril tell of it, because it was the great world in which he lived and had his being through all the long hours which he spent apart from her. But they were more distant and misty myths than ever to her now, Wall Street and Broadway, and certain grand houses on Murray Hill and Park Avenue. She had seen them all, but even when she looked upon them they seemed remote and foreign to her. She cared nought for anything in New York but Central Park, and even the Mall, in her eyes, could not vie in soaring grace and cool, green shadow with the maple-lined streets of old Ulm. Now every evening the husband and wife came together from out of two distant and conflicting worlds. So far as each was possessed by either, he or she was a stranger to the other. Cyril suddenly found that he had lost his audience. Home and baby consumed all power

00.1274

of interest in Agnes. And without being conscious of it, she expected Cyril's attention to be as concentrated and as microscopic as her own. She did not feel the least interested in the great trampling world of men in which Cyril had been striving all day for himself, for her, and for baby. Often when he was telling her of some incident in his day he had the mortification to see that she did not even hear him, and immediately felt proportionally injured. And this was Agnes, who for more than twelve perfect months had been second eyes, ears, voice, and soul to him!

Meanwhile, if any wonderfully cunning look of little Cyril was lost on his papa, as it very often was, Agnes also felt silently aggrieved. Cyril loved his wife and his child, but he also loved himself very dearly, and when wife and child from one unfailing source of delight merged into an anxious care, Cyril's thoughts began to revert to his own beloved self as an already lonely and neglected individual. Still it never occurred to him to seek other consolations—not then.

The evil deepened. Little Cyril's first tooth heralded the long-drawn wails and wasting away of little Cyril himself, and days and nights of weary waking and watching for both father and mother. It came at last that Cyril dreaded to enter his own home. The quick step, the light form, the beaming smile, that used to await him with eager welcome upon the stairs, greeted him no more.

Instead, in a darkened room he found a woman pale to sickliness, with dark rings circling her hollow eyes, so worn by watching and sleeplessness that she started in nervous terro at every sound as she bent over the pillow in her lap on which lay an infant, whose closed eyes, flickering pulse, and occasional spasmodic motions seemed to presage speedy death.

66

Oh, if I only knew what to do for him!" moaned Agnes one evening, as both she and Cyril bent over the pillow on which the wasted infant lay.

Even Cyril, used as he had grown to the sight of it, felt frightened and grief-stricken now, it looked so much as if it were dying. And there was a touch of remorse in his grief; for through it would steal the thought that if little Cyril must die, it were better that he should now, than linger on, killing his mother, and making both so wretched.

"If I only knew the right thing to do," Agnes went on, the great tears trickling down her wasted face for the first time in weeks.

"I never knew how much I could need a mother till now. No one, no one to tell me just what ought to be done. Mrs. Mash says one thing; she is a homœopathist. Mrs. Duche tells me to do another, just the opposite; she is a hydropathist. Mrs. Irritant says if I do either it will be sure death; I must do as she says and she is an allopathist. I try to forget them all, and to do just what doctor tells me. But look at baby, Cyril! He is dying! I know he is! What

can I do!"

"Let me send for Linda."

Cyril had made this proposition before, but the shadow which it brought into Agnes' eyes made him drop it at once. She could not explain to herself why she had such a dread of Linda's coming. She thought of her as Cyril's foster-sister, as his only near living relative. She herself was sisterless, and had no mother. More, she not only needed- she was dying for the help of woman, of a woman older, stronger, wiser, than herself. Her nineteen years of life had not made her strong enough to carry the burden that she now bore