gland woman, whose duty, I take it, is to set everybody
right, I wasn't to be put down by a boy like that, but caught him by the
collar of his jacket, snatched the cigar from his lips, and flung it
into the gutter, where it sizzled itself out. Then I lifted my
forefinger as I do in Sunday-class, and began to admonish him. But
instead of listening, he got the skirt of my alpaca dress between his
teeth and ground a great hole in it, swearing like a trooper
betweenwhiles.

Oh, sister! that was a trying season! In less than three minutes the
sidewalk was swarming with dirty-faced children. I might as well have
been in a wasps' nest. The spiteful imps buzzed around me so--little
girls, with lank hair falling over their eyes; lazy boys, swaggering
like drunken men, and swearing like troopers; and a woman--the boy who
smoked called her mother--who stood on a doorstep, with a hand on each
hip, scolding like fury. I kept my finger up. They would not hear a word
I said, but I felt it my duty to do that much, when a very gentlemanly
man in blue regimentals touched my arm, and observed in the kindest way
that things were getting so mixed and unpleasant perhaps I would permit
him to escort me round the corner. You know, sister, I always had a
power in the lift of my finger. It was wonderfully manifest just as this
gentleman crossed the street, and must have astonished him, for the
children hushed up at once, and huddled back to the doorstep like a
flock of lambs, which was an evidence of moral suasion I take pride in
reporting to the Society.

VI.

HE HAS COME.

Sisters:--As a representative of your august body, I ought now to have
been in an atmosphere of royalty--Imperial royalty, which counts at A
No. 1, as kings are put down. The young potentate of all the Russias,
with all his ships and things, ought to have been on hand a week ago;
but he still lingers on the "rolling sea and briny deep," a prey, it is
dreadfully to be feared, to sea-sickness--which, they tell me, is
heart-rending--and storms which are liable to aggravate the
sea-sickness.

I sympathize with that young man in all the depths of my feminine
nature--which are getting bottomless from the great need of compassion
which human life exhibits to the thinking mind. He ought to have been
here when our enthusiasm was at its hottest point. Then he would have
had the stormiest sort of a welcome. The soldiers were ready to file out
any minute; the mouths of ev