Wool-gathering

Chapter I

Raison d'etre. — The Commissariat. — A bad Beginning.

— Goths and Vandals. — Moral Reflections. — - Natural History of -Niagara. — The Badness of Women. — Moral Reflections. — The Goodness of Men. — More Moral Reflections. — Tact against Temper. — A Negation of Moral Reflections. — A Baby. — Two Babies. — Eloquent Outburst on Chicago. — Chicago itself. — Unhappy Girl in Chicago. — Inexperienced happy Pair in Chicago Station.

— Experienced happy Quartette in Chicago Station. — Predisposing Causes of the happy Pair. — Happy Family in Chicago Station. — Distressed Woman in Chicago Station. — Wisconsin. — Distressed Woman continued, — Distressed Woman concluded. .....

Page

Chapter II

Darwinian Theory in Milwaukee. — Milwaukee itself. — Pottawatomies in Newhall House. — Wonderful Advance of Civilization in Milwaukee. — Remarkable Girl in Milwaukee. — Saint Paul considered in his Relations to Milwaukee. — Aged Party in Train. — Motherless Baby in Train. — Treatise on the Inalienability of motherless Babies. — A Woman bringing a Man to Time. — Coming to Time herself. — A disagreeable Damsel. — General iv CONTENTS.

Moral Reflections on Railroad Accommodations. — Special Immoralities in Railroad Lack of Accommodations. .

— Model Conductor. — Superhumanly Model Conductor.

— Evolving a Conductor from our Moral Consciousness.

— Depicting a Conductor from Observation. — Laying down the (Higher) Law. — Constant changing of the Isothermal Lines in Railway Trains. — Raid upon the Ventilators. — Pitched Battle in the Train. — Defeat of the heaviest Battalions with great Slaughter. — Millennium on a Railroad. — A Beetle bewitched. — A terrible Infant. — An accomplished Young Lady. — Rose-colored Nuns. — Happy Teutons. ■ — Fine Writing on the Mississippi River 40

Chapter III

Parting Blessing. — On the Prairie. — Sublimity of a Minnesota Earm. — A Violent Supposition. — The Bearing of the Earth's Rotundity on Minnesota Earmers. — Flemish Painting of our House. — Elegant Extracts from Antique Rhymes. — Bill of Fare. — Bill of Costs.

— Self-Help. — Second Self-Help. — Outdoors. — Earm Buildings. — Hard Work, and a good Deal of it. — Mitigating the Curse by Machinery. — Praiseworthy attempts at Description. — Sentiment hovering over a Threshing- Machine. — > A Fling at the " lower States " in the Interest of Minnesota. — Many Things. — Computing the Gains. — Counting the Cost 73

Chapter IV

Fruit Crop of Minnesota compared with the Snakes of Ireland. — Plumming. — Going to Mill. — Perambulating Ruins in Minnesota. — Advantages of Ruins, — Moral and JEsthetic — Vermilion Falls. — County Fair. — Metaphysical and Agricultural Uses of a County Fair. — Pilgrims' Progress to a County Fair. — Norsemen and

CONTENTS. V

Celts. — Meander on the Mississippi Bottom-lands. — Steamboats cutting across Lots. — Spirited Pursuit of a County Fair. — Getting up Stairs. — The Pursuit successful . — Exhaustive Account of the Fair. — Comparison of Eastern and Western Cattle-Shows. — The Mounds afar. — The River-Ghost. — Agassiz receiving a Call. — The Mounds at hand. — A Romance spoiled.

— Philosophic Explanation of the Mounds. . . .97

Chapter V

The Result of Feeding, upon Ambition. — Holding our own against the Pretensions of Nature. — A Rhapsody over a Covered Wagon. — Expanding to the Occasion.

— The Mississippi in a Decline. — Causes Agricultural and Sentimental. — The Roadside. — Sea-Kings in Minnesota. — A Lakesicle Dinner. — Travelling in Beulah.

— Grass-growing explained on the true Principles of Poesy. — Doubtful Roads. — Escort in the Air. — Distance lending Enchantment. — Speculation. — Solid Ground. — Uncertain Foundations. — Busy Bees, -r- The Bridge that carries us safe over. — Hotel in the Transition Era. — Pathetic Discourse to Landlords. — A Surplus of Boys. — Saint Anthony. — Periphrasis of a Water-Cure Establishment.- — Saint Anthony's Claims to respect statistically considered. — Brawl between the Mississippi and Mankind. — An Act to amend the Act of Creation. — A Bewildered Saint. — An Appeal to a Saint's Good Sense. — Fulfilment of Prophecy. — Suspension Bridge. — Father Hennepin's Temptation. — Minneapolis. — -'A Memory 115

Chapter VI

The Pursuit of Sentiment under Difficulties* — Lo ! the poor Indian. — Hiawatha rampant. — A Popular Mistake corrected.— Minnehaha. — Shawondasee and Steam-Enyi CONTENTS.

gines. — • Emigrants. — Milking. -^- Mars cultivating the Drama. — Fort Snelling. — Investigations. — Philologues, embellished with Cuts. — A Glimpse into Eden.

— A Lake. — A Dam or not a Dam. — The Argument.

— A Dam that may be depended on. — A Dinner ditto.

— Valedictory 158

CHAPTER VII. Yarrow revisited. — A Display of Philological Erudition

— Egyptian Society. — On the Ohio. — Temptation resisted. — Piloting. — Reliable History of the Invention of Steam. — The Lost Found. — Visit to Mammoth Cave. — Battle Phantoms. — The Dethroned Monarch.

— Nashville. — Chit-chat. — Across Country. — Stone River. — Clay-eaters. — A Sign-board. — Train off the Track potentially. — Vagaries of the Country. — Lookout .184

Chapter VIII

Shady South. — Moppet's Ideas of Things. — A Charleston Irishwoman's Experience and Observation. — New England in Chattanooga. — Hackmanism in Chattanooga. — Mars bearing a Clothes-basket. — Freedmen's Houses. — Intelligent Driver. — Military Ascent of Lookout according to Intelligent Driver. — Civil Ascent of Lookout. ■ — Scenes within Scenes. — Paying off old Scores. — Historic Doubts concerning Mission Ridge. — Impossibility of Storming Lookout — Storming Lookout. — Ingenious Manner of giving one's self a little Puff. — Doing one's Duty to the Rising Generation. — The School on Mount Lookout. — Reappearance of Mars.

— A Bid for Flattery. — Proposal to carry the War into Africa. — The African proving a somewhat Long Road to Travel, but ending in Africa at last. — Neatness and Charm of Africa. — Revelation to an Ethiop of the Jewel

in his Ear. He bears it like a Man. — Reconstruction. . 215

CONTENTS. vii

Chapter IX

Fame waiting a Name. — ■ Officers' Car. -— ■ Topsy by Night. ■ — Relieving Burnsjde. — Knoxville. — Comfortable Reflections for a Besieged Town. — Holding on. — Port Saunders. — Return to Knoxville. — The Dead. — The Living. — New England. — A Plan of Reconstruction. — Pauperism North and South. — Hatred, its Causes and Cures. — Playing off the South and West against each other. . 252

Chapter X

East Tennessee. — Historic Doubts concerning Black Mountain. — Footprints of Fugitives. — On the War-trail. — Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties. — A Georgian Planter. — Plantation. Opinions. — Off the Track. — Northern Man with Southern Experience. — Accounts from Charleston 282

Chapter XI

In Washington. — Arlington. — Freedmen's Village. — A Patriarch. — Comparing Notes with Freedmen concerning Freedom. — Mount Vernon Colored Schools. — Colored Churches. — A (colored) Representative of the. First Families of Virginia. — Gettysburg. — Gossip of the Battle. — Home. — The Denouement. . . . 304

WOOL-GATHERING.

Chapter I

Raison d'etre. — The Commissariat. — A bad Beginning. — Goths and Vandals. — Moral Reflections. — Natural History of Niagara. — The Badness of Women. — Moral Reflections. — The Goodness of Men. — More Moral Reflections. — Tact against Temper. — A Negation of Moral Reflections. — A Baby. — Two Babies. — Eloquent Outburst on Chicago. — Chicago itself. — Unhappy Girl in Chicago. — Inexperienced happy Pair in Chicago Station. — Experienced happy Quartette in Chicago Station. — Predisposing Causes of the happy Pair. — Happy Eamily in Chicago Station. — Distressed Woman in Chicago Station. — Wisconsin. — Distressed Woman continued. — Distressed Woman concluded.

^BOUT a year ago I came into possession of a fortune. It was from an entirely unexpected source, and I naturally cast about for the best mode of investment. The war was bravely over, and there was no further need of private contributions to prop up public credit. Diligent investigation showed that woolgrowing was a delightful and profitable occupation, l*

Sheep are innocent, lambs engaging, and wool marketable. I therefore despatched my agent to Wisconsin, where he bought twenty-five sheep, at four dollars and fifty cents a head. This amounted to one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents. I gave him the odd half-dollar for commission, bade him put the remaining twelve dollars (I forgot to mention that the original fortune was one hundred and twenty-five dollars) into the bank against a rainy day, drive the sheep to Minnesota, and set them spinning, — -by metonymy. He wrote to me soon that he had faithfully carried out all my directions ; the sheep had been bought and driven home, and were in good condition. He added, however, that there was always a degree of uncertainty connected with the establishing of a family of sheep. A greater or less number generally succumbed to the severity of their first winter in a new climate. I wrote back at once that I did not expect the order of nature to be changed for my benefit, but neither did I wish to be annoyed by dead sheep dribbling through the winter. It could not be exhilarating to read, in every letter that came, "there is another sheep frozen." I therefore bade him not write any obit-

WOOL-GATHERING, H

uary notices, but wait till the sheep were all dead, and then say so.

I accordingly heard no bad news from my sheep* And sometime during the following summer word came that the sheep-shearing was over, and my agent was ready with his first yearly report. It was a beautiful document. It showed that my profits were two pounds of wool to each sheep. This my agent had sold for forty-five cents a pound, making ninety cents a head, which, multiplied by twenty-fivo heads* made twenty-two dollars and fifty cents as a year's interest of one hundred and twelve dollars and fifty cents. I have verified this reckoning by geometry and the higher mathematics, and I believe it to be correct in, every particular.

The thoughtful reader will not fail to see that twenty-two dollars and fifty cents is a sum of money not to be laughed at, and the question at once became, how to get possession of it. The United States Post-Office does not refund the property which it fails to transmit, and, considering the heavy robberies committed upon the Adams Express Company, I could not trust my treasure to its keeping. After a severe mental conflict I decided to go myself and fetch the money. Commentators differ as to the real motive of my journey, but this is the explanation on which the general opinion of foreign nations and the next age will finally settle.

Aware that mankind is ever athirst for knowledge, I have decided to gratify it by putting on record some of the more sagacious thoughts which naturally occur to the inquiring mind on its tour round the world. I shall not descend to the trivial details of personal experience , which are necessarily impertinent, but shall adhere strictly to such broad and philosophic views as have a national, I may say a cosmopolitan value. And I shall from time to time add moral reflections ; two reasons impel me to this : mankind is fond of reading moral reflections ; and I am fond of making them.

The first requisite for a long journey is to take all your best clothes. A prejudice prevails to some extent against this practice, and it is indeed unwise if you regard clothes solely as a means of warmth ; but the noble soul lifts its wardrobe into a higher sphere, and makes it an, element of character. You may in truth not need to array yourself in all your glory, but the consciousness that you can do it gives a peace of mind which outweighs many trunks.

Next in importance to your best clothes are two bottles of Dr. Hamlin's cholera mixture . When I say that Dr. Hamlin is an Orthodox Congregational clergyman, I need give no further reason for my recommendation; but I can from my own knowledge speak with confidence of the efficacy of his medicine. For nine weeks it travelled with us by field and flood, and not one of the party had the cholera !

A bottle of brandy makes an excellent travelling-companion if your principles and habits are good.

A box of mustard is an ounce of prevention. If your eye-teeth are as yet at an immature stage of development, you will order five bottles of potted tongue, beef, and herring, — small stone jars, each one holding, judging from your experience of meats, enough to last through two lunches. Opening them, you find them packed with salted fire, of which you can endure a morsel only byspreading it on a cracker with the tip of your fruitknife to the last degree of imperceptibility. If any person is designing to provision a fleet for Arctic explorations, let him apply to the publishers of this book before purchasing elsewhere, and he will hear of something very much to his advantage.

Beguiled by pleasant memories, you will order also three dozen spiced and pickled lambs' tongues ; and believe me, gentle reader, you have no conception till you see them together, how many tongues thirty-six spiced and pickled lambs have ! When you reflect that these are to be carried about with you till they are eaten, you see that lambs are not the only innocents which are in a pickle, and the situation becomes appalling. But I forbear.

Let us suppose now that your various viands are snugly bestowed, and yourself fairly started on your journey. The first thing you know, your basket bounces off the car-seat, and rolls over and over down the aisle* There is a rattling of crockery, and a sudden suspicion that your whole basket has turned into a cholera mixture. You are too much ashamed to take account of stock in public, but now and then put your nose down furtively to the crack of the lid to ascertain what smell seems to be uppermost, and are relieved at the absence of any prevailing perfume. By the time your series of observations are conducted to a satis* factory conclusion you are in Albany, the capital of the State of New York, the seat of a Legislature remarkable in an age of general uprightness for the purity of its morals and the incorruptibility of its legislation.

Here we stop for the night. The best house in Albany is said to be the Vandal House. You are shown into a room that has not been opened since its occupant left it, and is unsavory and untidy to the last degree. An appeal to the gentlemanly clerk secures a change for the better; but there is a hole by the fireplace in Number Two that looks suspicious. You cross-examine the porter, who assures you that it has no significance whatever. A mouse in that room is an event of which history gives no record. Nevertheless, you take the precaution to stuff the hole with an old New York Herald^ and are awakened at midnight by the dreadful rustling of paper. A dreadful gnawing succeeds the dreadful rustling, and away goes a boot in the direction of the sound. There is a pause broken only by heart throbs ! Then another gnawing, followed by a boot till the supplyis exhausted. Then you begin on the pillows. A longer pause gives rise to the hope that order is about to reign in Warsaw, and you are just falling asleep again, when a smart scratching close to your ear, shoots you to the other side of the room with the conviction that the mouse is running up the folds of the curtain at the head of your bed. In a frenzy you ring violently, and ask through the door for a chambermaid.

" Can't have no chambermaid this time o' night," drawls the porter sleepily.

" Then send up a mouse-trap."

" Aint no mouse-trap in the house."

" Then bring a cat ! "

u Dunno nothin' about it," and he scuffs his slippered feet down the long gallery, growling audibly, poor fellow, half suspecting evidently that he is the victim of a joke ; but alas ! it is no joke.

You mount sentry on the foot of the bed, facing the enemy. He emerges from the curtain, runs up and down the slats of the blind in innocent glee, flaunts across the window-seat, flashing every now and then into obscurity; and this is the worst of all. When you see him he is in. one place, but

WOOL-GATHERING. V\

when you do not see him he is everywhere. You hold fast your umbrella, and from time to time make vigorous raps on the floor to keep him out of your immediate vicinity, and so the night wears wearily away. Your refreshing sleep turns into a campaign against a mouse, for which agreeable entertainment you pay in the morning three dollars and a half; and the gentlemanly clerk, with a pitying smile, informs you> " O, we cannot help that ! There are mice all over the house ! "

Moral reflection : If ever the education of a soaring human boy be intrusted to my care. I will endeavor to model his manners on those of a clerk in a hotel. For conscious superiority, tempered with benevolence and swathed in suavity ; for perfect self-possession; for high-bred condescension to the ignorance and toleration of the weakness of others ; for absolute equality to circumstances, and a certain grace, assurance, and flourish of bearing, — give me a clerk in a hotel. We may see generals, poets, and philosophers, indistinguishable from the common herd ; but a true hotel clerk wears on his beauteous brow, and in his noble niien, the indubitable sign of greatness.

From Albany to Niagara is a pleasant day's journey, and the Niagara mice are not quite so large, nor quite so lively, as those of Eastern New York. They do not appear till the second day. Then, resting quietly after a walk, you see a mouse creep timidly from under the bureau. You improvise a sort of pontoon bridge to the bell, out of your chairs and tables, and, as it is day-time, secure a chambermaid and superintend a mousehunt. She whisks about the room enthusiastically, peers under all the furniture, assuring you the while that it is four years now she has been in the house and never saw a mouse in the chambers, though she confesses to having seen them in the kitchen, and, being hard pressed, well, she has seen them in the passages ; but in the chambers, no ! never ! and you are led to believe that, though a mouse might stand shivering on the brink of your room, he would fear to step foot over the threshold. No, there is no mouse here, not a sign of a mouse.

" No sign of a mouse, except the mouse itself," you suggest.

" Ah ! but you must have been mistaken. It was a shadow. Why," (with a grand flourish of the valance with her right hand, and in the air with her left,) " you can see for yourself there is no mouse here," — and she thinks she has made her point.

You look at her, debating within yourself whether it is worth while to attempt to acquaint her with the true province of negatives, the proper disposition of the burden of proof, and the sophistry of an undue assumption of the major premise, and decide that it is not.

Moral and philological reflection : We see now the reason why trunks and travelling-bags are called traps. Synecdoche : Because the mouse* traps are the most important part of your luggage.

There is said to be a very fine waterfall at Niagara, but I do not know much about it. I remember that I did hear a sort of rushing and roaring under the window.

I will now tell you a story. At Erie, a decently dressed young woman, with a pale, fragile-looking little girl entered the car, and attempted to go past a gentleman to an inside seat. He told her that seat was occupied by a person who had just stepped out. She pushed against him, still determined to enter, and he had to put up his arm to keep her out, but only resisting, not pushing her. Some one then told her that it was the gentleman's wife who occupied the seat. " O, if it was a lady, she begged pardon ! She did not know it was a lady," and went a few steps away to take an outside seat by a young girl. The latter told her that also was engaged. " Engaged ! " in a loud voice. " Who engaged it ? How much did he pay for it extra ? " And she flounced into it in a state of high indignation. After the cars started, the occupant of the seat came in, looked at her doubtfully, and then spoke. Her reply was not audible to the other passengers, but it evidently startled him. He glanced around upon the others, half questioning, half smiling,- whispered to his young companion, and retreated, taking his stand by the door. The woman then began to laugh, in a loud, boisterous manner, and a gentleman behind her beckoned to the one whose seat she had taken, and, after consultation, removed the girl from her unpleasant proximity to the woman, and gave her his own seat. They then tried to induce the little girl to sit with her mother, but she, poor child, refused, and no one could find it in his heart to force her. Thus, by her evil behavior, the woman had dispossessed of their seats two men and one woman, and had secured three seats for herself. When the conductor came in she gave him a ticket to Buffalo, although she was on a Cleveland train. He told her she was on the wrong train, must get out at the next station, and wait for a Buffalo train. No, she had changed her mind, and was going back to Cleveland. Then she must pay the fare. But the fare was just what she refused to pay, proffering only her Buffalo ticket. The brakeman was ordered in at the next station, and told to take her out. She was so strong and so spirited, both literally and figuratively, that he could not do it, and the conductor had to take hold; between them both they hustled her out, the little girl crying and clinging to her, and calling, " O mamma ! mamma ! " Fairly off the train, and seeing herself reduced to the necessity of paying or staying, she consented to pay, and entered the car again. At a small station a little farther on she changed her mind once more, and got out. The last seen of her, as the train moved on, she was brandishing her fist, and shouting, u I 've got fifty dollars in my pocket, — yes, a hundred, — and I'll bet the whole of it I '11 have that conductor licked, the minute I get to Cleveland ! "

Can anything be more sad than this ? Yet the scene was not without its pleasant features. There was much good, honorable, manly feeling shown, much sympathy by those who only saw the expulsion, and not its causes. In a world where women suffer so much without pity, it is a vexatious thing to see pity lavished upon a woman who does not deserve it ; but it is good to know that the warm heart is there. A party of drovers, I should think, men rough of beard and gruff of voice, shook their heads. They " hated to see a man lay hands on a woman." They " never wanted to see a woman shoved about that way, no matter what she did." A crowd was continually gathering about her; a crowd closed in around the scuffle ; a crowd listened to her haranguing on the platform ; but the only violent words I heard were those which came from her own lips. There was every disposition to give the woman her own way, simply because she was a woman, yet there was no disposition to interfere with the legal right of the conductor. Some, who thought the woman was put out for having taken the wrong train, maintained earnestly that the conductor was in the wrong. She had a right to change her mind* No matter if she did buy her ticket in the morning for Buffalo ; if she wanted now to go back to Cleveland she had a right to go, and the conductor had no right to stop her.

Moral reflections : So doubly a pity is it when a woman misbehaves, pity for the wrong she does to herself, but pity a thousand times more for the wrong thus put upon those to whom she should be the embodiment of beneficence. The deference which men show to women is no mere chance, civility, custom, or compliment, however they intend it. It is instinctive, and it shows where a woman has vantage-ground to work upon humanity. When she fails to meet this outcoming reverence with a corresponding worthiness, her failure is man's loss. Gentle or vulgar, his soul is wounded in its most delicate susceptibilities, although he may not know it. The harsh blow blunts his sensibility to the soft touch. What cruel training had wrought a coarse, violent woman from a tender little girl I do not know, but I do know that the cruel training had builded worse than it knew. Beyond all its consequences as an intelligent act, every woman's fault is every man's misfortune.

Let me tell you another story. We are in no hurry to reach our journey's end, and if you were not reading this, the chances are you would be doing something worse.

A pleasant hotel piazza, never mind where. A sunny Indian-summer evening. Guests sitting about in careless conversation. Children playing in the yard below. A woman, the most striking of all the company, not exactly beautiful, but with a certain comeliness, an elegance of dress and demeanor, that give a far stronger sense of beauty than does beauty without them. She is sitting with that attractiveness in repose that bespeaks grace in motion, her wise, white fingers gleaming and glancing in the silken meshes of some fine, feminine work. A young man drives bravely by with a young woman at his side. A little boy, the son of the beautiful woman, — on the whole, she is beautiful, — with a boy's carelessness, lets fly his arrow straight at one of the high-spirited horses. He prances and curvets up the street, and the mother chides her boy for his heedless act. The young man, as soon as he can curb his startled horses, whirls them about, drives back furiously to the hotel, reins them in suddenly, and with flashing eyes and angry color begins, — " I should think some of you gentlemen," — but he never tells his thought. Sweeps down upon him a vision of grace and grandeur ; for the mother had seen him as he turned, divined the

" Thunder gathering on his brow, Lightning flashing from his eye,"

flung aside the light entanglements of her hands, rose quickly as a goddess might have risen, glided — no, swept — I have used the word before, but I know no other to express the dignity of her movement — swept down the path, and flooded and drowned his angry questioning with her full, clear, melodious voice, " Will you permit me, Sir, to apologize ? " The change in the young man's feelings and demeanor was so sudden and complete, as to be almost ludicrous. He had, as he supposed, run full tilt against some evil-minded men, and found instead a beautiful woman at his feet. He had waged war, and peace smothered him with flowers. His coat of mail melted off from him and left him defenceless. He could hardly permit her to tell her story. He blushed, he hesitated, he apologized ! and I rather think he rode away with a vague conviction that he had shot a fine woman.

There is no moral to this story. I told it because it is so pretty a picture in my memory that I like to unfold it.

All this time we have been rushing on through the interminable wild rain, and the interminable tame prairies, broad levels of marsh and field, — Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, — fertile and fair in the sunshine perhaps, but inexpressibly dismal and water-soaked now. And here is a little Western baby, who puts us all to shame with his philosophy. A handsome little fellow is he, scarcely two years old, travelling with a stranger, a man whom he has seen but for a day. Yet he left grandmother, and Kitty, and the old homestead, with only one little wail at parting, and now rides away munching his "fancy-cake " like a stoic. He plays, he chatters with his stranger friend, he lies down on the seat and sleeps, and when there is a stir among his colors and his friend says, " Waking up, Freddy ? " Freddy pipes out his little " ish " cheerily, and rubs his little fist in his black eyes, and stares about content. I do not know, Freddy. Such equanimity is suspicious. Is it suppression or destitution of feeling ? Is it your good training or your defective organization ? Cry a little, Freddy, shy a little, Freddy,. for very shame. I am afraid there is a cold little heart under your scarlet frock, and that by and by the cold little heart will grow and grow, — out of the memory of the scarlet frock, out of the sight of bright black eyes ; and somewhere there will be a bad, hard man to wife and child. But let us not take time by the forelock. And here, in a dingy little village, in the cold, clouded early morning, comes a Western woman, driving a two-horse wagon up to the dingy little station, with a baby in her arms, and another at her side. She sits in the wagon holding the horses, while her mother, an old, gray-headed woman, climbs out over the high wheel alone. She has come in that wagon, she tells us, more than seven miles before eight o'clock, through this comfortless morning, on her weary way, a hundred miles, to visit a sick daughter ; and the other daughter, whose husband is also ill, must drive home alone with her babies. They are energetic women, and I praise their energy ; but I do not praise that state of things which writes its story in deep lines of toil and anxiety on brow, and cheek, and lip. Until it can be helped we must bear it, but we have not learned our best life so long as we have weather-beaten faces of women.