Year: 1874

tion) has sent his wife this Summer to
small watering-p place in Virginia. You would
be sure to meet her at some place of Summer
resort, for she likes crowd. She has no
relish for camping out in the lonely Adlron-
dacks, is not in love with solitude, secretly Is
of opinion, we suspect, that Mother Nature 10
a grim old woman whose acquaintance she
cares to make only in kitchen garden. She
has all the babies with her; she and the babies
are always ready for jaunt; or, if they are
not in trim, the ready-made clothing stores
supply all she needs. Wherever they go, to
fashionable hotel or bOarding-hOuse or quiet
farm house. the weather brightens the morn
ing after they arrive; people discover that
the bathing is better than at the Branch. the
coffee is really good, and the butter endurabe.
The Coonel's cousins (from Boston)
who accompany his wife are beyond
measure annoyed at her unthrifty happy
go-lucky ways; her lack of aesthetic tastes,
her Indifference to those fine distinctions of
character which mark people off into classes.
They (the Misses White of Boston) possess
instincts so keen that they can feel as by the
rising of spirit thermometer the presence OF
alien natures to their own. All the bOarders
are alien natures /; how could it be otherwise
when there are two Market-st clerks from
Philadelphia with not an idea beyond the
hardware they sell and the sham jewelry they
wear a New-York sugar-trader making con
"nections;n two or three Southern matrons
and their husbands, to whom they assign the
Incidence and lack of education which the
Boston people attribute to those inferior
races; and the usual mob Of silly girls on the
lookout FOR husbands, and utterly without
careers in life.


The young women from New-England, deli
cate, thoroughbred representatives of good
old stock, are forced to turn to their ferns and
sketching and rowing for solace and outlet.
They are used to thsi they generally lift
their fastidiOus brOws slightly with sad
regret when they speak of "people," meaning
the world outside of their clique. but
always add, with generous aftibllity
toward the other half of Gods creation,
that mature never disapppoints u.s."
Their cousin, who is q Western woman, with
a dash of Southern blood, knows everybody
at "the Springs" by dinner-time. Something
in her soft voice, the sparkle OF her eyes, her
light-hearted laugh when with the babies,
draws first one and then another to her. She
tells the amused NewEnglanders in day or
two bits of personal history of this one and
of that cOmcal and pathetic. but which seem
to have touched her to the quick. The gaudy
Market-st. clerks have an old mother for
whom they have bought little house and
furnished it, "and they are going to have
"their home all together now. intend to
"call and take tea with them when l go
n IL III oh aHH I'm IF fba
stupid New-YOrlS merchants is an energetic
temperance reformer, and another followed
the Sanitary Commission through the war
with his gifts and labor, and the third has
blind wife, who remains in her room, and he
is a devoted lover to her still in her gray
haired old age. The tender-hearted, dull,
lovable old women, the men with their old
fashioned courtesy and older opinions, the
pretty young girls well read in Elizabethan
literature and the cookery book, they were
all fresh pages of charming book to the
little fat woman. She brought them together.
She made them acquainted with no fussy
managing, but just as the OdOress oil blends
a dozen different unpleasant scents together
into one exquisite perfume.


The story was the same last Summer and



goes, she finds a good many tired people who
have stepped aside out of the work and heat
of their daily lives to rest little while. She
has no learning and no talent of any sort,
only curious insight, which reveals to her
whatever hurt they may have carried with
them from this daily life. curious tact which
brings her close to them. The little. woman
under her gay, happy temper, has infinite pity,
and a great trust in Christ and in the healing
power of human sympathy. She cannot preach
to her ailing and tired companions. DIR.
BrOadhead does that in the parlOr on Sunday,
an old sermon delivered ponderously and well.
She does not deal in tracts, which Miss Smith
sends out to the heather, taking the pennies
from the children to defray tho expenses. But
she makes them all friends together putting
her Christianity into merry Oyster-bake, or
dance in the barn-into thousand common
place, hearty, friendly words and ways which
nobody counts or notices. When September
comes, they will all disperse and go home, this
way and that. They will feel themselves
curiously refreshed and strengthened. and will
have made some good friends, perhaps for life,
but will remember our nameless little woman
only as "a pleasant person whom they would
willingly meet again." just as we forget the
spring in the woods, which quenched our
thirst and sparkled gladly in the sun, without
money and without price.