ose that swung the lamps and stood round the altar?"

"Oh, those were the acolytes."

"Any relations to the boys we saw at morning service?" says I.

"Oh, they are all the same."

"Mercy on me!" says I; "what a large family of boys--and so near of an
age, too!"

E. E. lifted her head and gave me the ghost of a smile--that was all. I
believe she felt that talking was a sin just then, and I felt a little
that way myself.

"That music was splendid," says I, "and the flowers. I don't think I
ever was in any meeting-house that seemed so close to heaven. But then I
always had a hankering after such things. And why not? If God gives us
music and flowers, light and sweet odors, can it be wrong to render them
back to him? Cousin, I never knew what power there was in such things
till now."

"Phoemie," says she--and a queer smile came over her face--"I
shouldn't wonder if you go back, at last, a High Church woman. Then what
would the Society say?"

I felt myself turning red--as if I, Phoemie Frost, could change in the
religion of my forefathers!

"No," says I; "there I am firm as a rock; but with firmness, I hope,
cousin, that I join toleration. It seems to me that our Pilgrim Fathers
made a mistake when they expected all mankind to think with them, and
another mistake when they put aside the holiest and most solemnly
beautiful days of all the year--those upon which our blessed Lord was
born, suffered, and ascended into heaven.

L.

THAT MAN WITH THE LANTERN.

Dear sisters:--I am back in Washington. So is Cousin E. E. and Dempster,
who has got a case before Congress; and when a man has that he just
makes up his mind to take permanent lodgings in a sleeping-car, and make
his home by daytime in a railroad section.

You never saw anything like the hurry in which such men live. As for the
married ones, their wives scarcely see them at all unless they catch 'em
flying with a railroad ticket in one hand, and a carpet-bag, swelled out
like an apple-dumpling, in the other.

To us women this kind of life is tantalizing--very.

When Cousin D. came up from Wall Street, all in a fume, and says he:
"Come, ladies, if you've a mind to go to Washington, just pack up and
get your things," we both rushed into the street like crazy creatures,
and came back with our pockets crammed, and our hands full of hair-pins,
bits of ribbon, lengths of lace, and so on. These we huddled into our
trunks the last thing, drew a deep brea