told her she looked so shocked and disappointed that I threw
myself in her arms, saying I would not distress her for the world;
that I would do anything she desired; that if she wished she might
send Fred off, for I loved her best on earth. But after some minutes
of deep thought she looked at me quizzically and replied, 'You know,
dear, I always said you must choose your career for yourself.' Then
seeing that I seemed hurt and ashamed, she kissed me and whispered,
'Love makes us selfish: my affection for you has grown stronger than
my ambition. If _you_ are happy, my Eleanor, I can wait patiently
for the advancement of the rest of my sex.'"

Then Eleanor rose, and drawing her shawl round her preparatory to going,
said shyly, "And what I came to tell you is, that the wedding will take
place at Christmas."

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.

AN AMERICAN LADY'S OCCUPATIONS SEVENTY YEARS AGO.

We are looking over sundry trunks and boxes, the careful and the
careless gatherings of three generations. There are law-papers in dusty
files; familiar gossipy letters from brothers and sisters and college
chums; dignified letters from reverend judges and law-makers; letters
bursting with scandalized Federalisms, and burning or melting with
long-forgotten joys and sorrows. We have read some thousands of these
papers, and begin to be very uncertain about the times we are living in.
What indeed is this year of our Lord? We have a dim recollection that we
have been wished a happy New Year in 1875, yet we are living and
thinking with the boys and girls of 1776, who have grown to be the men
and women of Jefferson's time.

To make things more misty to our comprehension, we are sitting by a
dormer window in a high, "hip-roofed" garret of a mansion built just
before the Revolution, and the air is redolent of ancient memories. The
very cobweb that swung across the window just now has a venerable
appearance, entirely inconsistent with the fact that the housemaid's
broom was supposed to have whisked across these beams but yesterday. But
then the housemaids of to-day, as everybody knows, are, as a source of
perplexity and vexation of spirit, always to be relied upon, but never
to be relied upon for anything else. And with the thought we sigh for
the "good old days" and the "good old servants" of our grandmothers.

Happy grandmothers! so blessed in their simple, quiet lives,