girl but Huldah laughing at me.

Certain it was that I

could not get another girl to dance with me all night, and I had to dance with her ten times."

"But what has all this to do with ladies' dressing?" asked Miss Mumby, after she had wiped the tears of laughter from her face. "I am sure, Mr. Olney, to answer your first question, I think we will receive more respect if we dress in a becoming manner. Your own incident proves it. The girls would have danced with you if you had appeared in a handsome and well-fitted suit of your own."

"I don't care how finely all your rigging fits, but you'll be laughed at for your glitter, and your pinchbeck. I dare say they knew I couldn't afford the bright steel buttons, nor that abundance of broadcloth skirts, and they were amused to see me fussing so foolishly with the old brass watch."

"Ladies need more ornaments than gentlemen, and my bracelets are not brass or pinchbeck, I'd have you know, Mr. Olney. Ladies must dress a great deal to keep from being despised."

"Does anybody despise my sister-Judge Barnard's wife ?"

"Why, no, Mr. Olney-what do you mean? Mrs. Barnard is one of the upper-ten-and she's your sister? I never knew that before."

She's my sister, and she has friends enough in Merrimack, that you know. Well, have you not noticed how There's not a cottage girl within

simply she dresses?

twenty miles that dresses more plain or spends less for clothing than she."

"But I'll warrant she had on all her rings and ribbons, and made her silks whistle when she was setting her cap for the Judge."

"That was what I was coming to, Miss Mumby; and I tell you, upon my honor, she never had a silk gown till after she was married and came to Merrimack. I have seen her go to church in a linen frock and apron which she herself spun and wove. And I remember how finely she looked as she tripped through the lane and across the strawberry meadow, and how her cheeks glowed, and how the hearts of the smartest young men palpitated as she passed between them on the steps of the old country church. My sister was dressed in white at her wedding, it is true, but she paid for all her wedding finery with what she earned at mother's loom and wheel; and a cheap bombazette was all the black dress she had."

"Can you remember all that, Mr. Olney?"

Yes, I remember it all; and I remember how her associates envied her that black bombazette. It was the first that was worn in our neighborhood, and the news went around when she got it as if it had been a gown of gold. But I must go back to the office; and I wish you to remember, girls, that it is not fine clothing or gay jewelry that is going to get you enterprising husbands and make you respected in the world. Have good minds, well adorned with intellectual jewels; let health paint your cheeks, and simplicity grace your forms and manners, and

you will command admiration and ensure a fortunate and an honorable destiny. Mind what I say."

66

'But, we must conform to fashion, or be laughed at, Mr. Olney."

"Make your own fashions, Miss Mumby, that is the true way. Be fastidious in grace and simplicity, then choose according to your means, and you will make fashion your servant and not your mistress. The proudest girls in town like to get on their plain cottage bonnets, and their simple cottage gowns, very often, and all eyes follow and admire them when they do. And who gave them that fashion? Some bashful, beautiful country girl that they saw tripping through the fields, or walking in the wood-path, with the light of the morning in her eyes, and its gladness in her.heart and on her face."

6

XIV.

I PAID a visit to my brothers. I found Jesse quite plea santly situated, and contented ;-in fact, too well contented to encourage me with the hope of his getting a great deal of culture, or acquiring any moral power or social elevation. A harmless, drowsy, peaceful life in the senses answered all his wishes, and circumscribed his sphere. It gratified me to look upon a face so amiable as his, and to hear everybody call him kind and clever, and assure me he would be a virtuous man; at the same time it would have pleased me more, could I have seen him less elated with mere creature comforts, and more interested in a book, more eager for intellectual pleasures, and inspired with more manly hopes and aims.

So long as fortune smiled on us all, and Jesse possessed these comforts of his choice, I knew he would have as much happiness as merely sensuous objects, mingled with virtue and kindness, could give; but if misfortune returned upon us, I feared that he would be ill-prepared to resist the shock, or shield his brother and sister. However, I spent a very pleasant week with Jesse. We enjoyed morning walks together, and I read to him until he confessed that a passage or two in Goldsmith and Irving gave

him real interest. His room was arranged more pleasantly, and he was given a couple of interesting books. We conversed on old times together, commencing with a laugh, as we related some incident of our young sports and adventures, and ending in tears, as we spoke of our dear parents, and remembered how happy we were the last bright summer that our father was at home. Our riddles were repeated. Old Blue Beard was reviewed. Jesse remembered Jack Sprat and his amiable wife, and he thought, when he was married, if he and his wife made out to harmonize their contrasted tastes as well as that exemplary couple did; and, while he couldn't eat any fat, and his wife couldn't eat any lean, they might drink the broth together, and lick the platter clean, he would ask no more of wedded life.

I described the rapture that thrilled me, and the shouts of joy I sent from basement to attic, when I found in my stocking, one Christmas morning, a pictorial copy of Mother Hubbard, that famous epic of the nursery. Jesse had not forgotten how his head swam as he saw the picture and read the poem of the old woman who was soaring up and away, broom in hand, seventy times higher than the moon," to dust the stars, and "brush the cobwebs from the sky."

I related something I had read of "Eyes and No Eyes," in Mrs. Barbauld. Jesse remembered an incident of Robinson Crusoe. I was rehearsing "Edwin and Angelina," or "Lady Margaret and Sweet William," while he was admiring that wonderful sagacity of the King of Hearts, which detected and exposed the cunning rogue who stole the