without. How I long to
have haying-time come! You must ride from the fields with your children,
as I do, on a load of hay, when the work of the day is over, and look
down upon all the world. O Frances," added she, "if we could only
persuade your husband to turn farmer, our victory would be complete."

"It will never be," said Frances.

"I don't know that," replied Charlotte; "he seemed to set very little
value on the city residence, and would fain have stripped his elegant
rooms to dignify your rustic retreat; but I would not consent to the
migration of a particle of gilding or damask, but told him he might send
the marble slabs, with the mirrors,--and I speak for one of the slabs for
the dairy. But I have been more thoughtful for you than you have for
yourself: look at this list of books that I have ordered."

Frances was surprised; she had never seen Charlotte with a book in her
hand, and she candidly expressed her astonishment that, amidst all her
hurry, she had remembered _books_.

"Where do you think I acquired all my knowledge," said Charlotte, "if I
never open a book? But you are half right; I certainly do not patronize
book-making; and yet all summer I am reading the book of Nature. I open
it with the first snow-drop and crocus which peeps from under her white
robe; and then, when she puts on her green mantle, strewed with

'The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose,'

I study the lilies of the field. Depend upon it, there is more wisdom
without doors than we can find within,--more wisdom there than in books."

"I believe it," said Frances; "all nature speaks of the Creator,--of the
one great Mind which formed this endless variety, and can give life to
the most insignificant flower that grows by the way-side."

"I should like to know what flower you call insignificant," said
Charlotte; "not this little houstonia, I hope; that has a perfection of
organization in which many of your splendid green-house flowers are
deficient. But that is the way with us: we call those things sublime
which are on a large scale, because they are magnified to our narrow
minds, and we can comprehend them without any trouble.--But I must not
display all my wisdom to you at once--how, like Solomon of old, I can
speak of trees, from 'the cedar-tree that is in Lebanon even unto the
hyssop that springeth out of the wall.'--And now, fair sister,

'Up, up, and quit your books,'

and come with me to one of my studios--n