earned to care
for them. Poor Judge Trask and Colonel Flail and Mr. Bisland,--so they
are only myths? Dear Hiram," she added with a sigh, "I can forgive you
for everything except for taking those three good men out of our lives!"

After all this I have indeed reformed. I have actually become prudent,
and I have a bank-account that is constantly increasing. I do not hate
books; I simply do not buy them. And I eschew that old sinner, Kinzie,
and all the sinister influences he represents. As for our third little
boy, we have named him Reform Meigs, after Alice's mother's
grandfather, who built the first saw-mill in what is now the State of
Ohio, and was killed by the Indians in 1796.

THE TOUCH IN THE HEART

Old Abel Dunklee was delighted, and so was old Abel's wife, when little
Abel came. For this coming they had waited many years. God had
prospered them elsewise; this one supreme blessing only had been
withheld. Yet Abel had never despaired. "I shall some time have a
son," said he. "I shall call him Abel. He shall be rich; he shall
succeed to my business; my house, my factory, my lands, my
fortune,--all shall be his!" Abel Dunklee felt this to be a certainty,
and with this prospect constantly in mind he slaved and pinched and
bargained. So when at last the little one did come it was as heir to a
considerable property.

The joy in the house of Dunklee was not shared by the community at
large. Abel Dunklee was by no means a popular man. Folk had the
well-defined opinion that he was selfish, miserly, and hard. If he had
not been actually bad, he had never been what the world calls a good
man. His methods had been of the grinding, sordid order. He had
always been scrupulously honest in the payment of his debts, and in
keeping his word; but his sense of duty seemed to stop there: Abel's
idea of goodness was to owe no man any money. He never gave a penny to
charities, and he never spent any time sympathizing with the
misfortunes or distresses of other people. He was narrow, close,
selfish, and hard, so his neighbors and the community at large said,
and I shall not deny that the verdict was a just one.

When a little one comes into this world of ours, it is the impulse of
the people here to bid it welcome, and to make its lot pleasant. When
little Abel was born no such enthusiasm obtained outside the austere
Dunklee household. Popular sentiment found vent in an expression of
the hope that the