hat! did you never read any novels?" said the young lady.

"Oh, to be sure I have," said Myrtle, blushing as she thought of the
great trunk and its contents. "I have read 'Caleb Williams,' and
'Evelina,' and 'Tristram Shandy'" (naughty girl!), "and the 'Castle of
Otranto,' and the 'Mysteries of Udolpho,' and the 'Vicar of Wakefield,'
and 'Don Quixote'--"

The young lady burst out laughing. "Stop! stop! for mercy's sake," she
cried. "You must be somebody that's been dead and buried and come back
to life again. Why you're Rip Van Winkle in a petticoat! You ought to
powder your hair and wear patches."

"We've got the oddest girl here," this young lady wrote home. "She has
n't read any book that is n't a thousand years old. One of the girls
says she wears a trilobite for a breastpin; some horrid old stone, I
believe that is, that was a bug ever so long ago. Her name, she says, is
Myrtle Hazard, but I call her Rip Van Myrtle."

Notwithstanding the quiet life which these young girls were compelled to
lead, they did once in a while have their gatherings, at which a few
young gentlemen were admitted. One of these took place about a month
after Myrtle had joined the school. The girls were all in their best,
and by and by they were to have a tableau. Myrtle came out in all her
force. She dressed herself as nearly as she dared like the handsome
woman of the past generation whom she resembled. The very spirit of the
dead beauty seemed to animate every feature and every movement of the
young girl whose position in the school was assured from that moment.
She had a good solid foundation to build upon in the jealousy of two or
three of the leading girls of the style of pretensions illustrated by
some of their talk which has been given. There is no possible success
without some opposition as a fulcrum: force is always aggressive, and
crowds something or other, if it does not hit or trample on it.

The cruelest cut of all was the remark attributed to Mr. Livingston
Jerkins, who was what the opposition girls just referred to called the
great "swell" among the privileged young gentlemen who were present at
the gathering.

"Rip Van Myrtle, you call that handsome girl, do you, Miss Clara? By
Jove, she's the stylishest of the whole lot, to say nothing of being a
first-class beauty. Of course you know I except one, Miss Clara. If a
girl can go to sleep and wake up after twenty years looking like that, I
know a good many wh