thanking God for full crops, because the corn and potatoes were
things they all could understand and accept with universal thankfulness;
but about the birth of Christ, and its merciful object, no two sects
that I ever heard of could agree, much less the Old Church and the New
Covenanters.

There it is again; my pen is getting demoralized. Christmas has come and
gone. What more have I got to say about it? Why, just nothing. Wise
people accept the past and look forward.

Cousin Dempster insisted upon it, that I should come up and spend New
Year's Day with them. Cousin E. E. was going to receive calls, and
wanted some distinguished friend to help her entertain.

I went.

Early in the morning the empty carriage came down to my boarding-house,
with those two regimental chaps on the out seat.

I was all ready, with my pink silk dress on, and my front hair all in
one lovely friz; but I just let the carriage wait that the boarders and
people, with their faces against the window opposite, might have a good
chance to look at it. Then I walked down the stairs with queenly
slowness; the long skirt of my dress came a-rustling after, with a rich
sound that must have penetrated to the boarding-house parlor, for the
door was just a trifle open as I went by, and three faces, I could swear
to, were peeping out as if they had never seen a long-trailed, pink silk
dress before. Then I heard a scuttling toward the window, and, while I
stood on the upper step, gathering up the back cataract of my dress,
those same faces flattened themselves plump against the glass.

Of course I did not hurry myself on that account, but took an
observation up and down the street while I tightened the buttons of my
glove, though one of the regimental chaps was a-standing there and
holding the door wide open.

"Why shouldn't I give the poor things just this one glimpse of the
fashionable life to which genius has lifted me," says I to myself.

Influenced by this idea, I paused, perhaps, half a minute, with my foot
on the iron step, and asked the regimental chap, with the air of a queen
giving directions, if it was very cold? and if Mrs. Dempster was quite
well, that morning?

He bowed when he answered both these questions, with the greatest
respect; which was satisfactory, as the people on both sides must have
seen him do it.

Then I stepped gracefully into the carriage and sat down, buried to my
knees in billows of pink silk. Over that I drew the rob