ng home li-bry books. Pop he don't
uphold to novel-readin'. I have never saw a novel yet."

"Well, this book won't injure you, Tillie. You must tell me all about
it when you have read it. You will find it so interesting, I'm afraid
you won't be able to study your lessons while you are reading it."

Outside the school-room, Tillie looked at the title,--Ivanhoe,"--and
turned over the pages in an ecstasy of anticipation.

"Oh! I love her! I love her!" throbbed her little hungry heart.

II

"I'M GOING TO LEARN YOU ONCE!"

Tillie was obliged, when about a half-mile from her father's farm, to
hide her precious book. This she did by pinning her petticoat into a
bag and concealing the book in it. It was in this way that she always
carried home her "li-bries" from Sunday-school, for all story-book
reading was prohibited by her father. It was uncomfortable walking
along the highroad with the book knocking against her legs at every
step, but that was not so painful as her father's punishment would be
did he discover her bringing home a "novel"! She was not permitted to
bring home even a school-book, and she had greatly astonished Miss
Margaret, one day at the beginning of the term, by asking, "Please,
will you leave me let my books in school? Pop says I darsen't bring 'em
home."

"What you can't learn in school, you can do without," Tillie's father
had said. "When you're home you'll work fur your wittles."

Tillie's father was a frugal, honest, hard-working, and very prosperous
Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, who thought he religiously performed his
parental duty in bringing up his many children in the fear of his heavy
hand, in unceasing labor, and in almost total abstinence from all
amusement and self-indulgence. Far from thinking himself cruel, he was
convinced that the oftener and the more vigorously he applied "the
strap," the more conscientious a parent was he.

His wife, Tillie's stepmother, was as submissive to his authority as
were her five children and Tillie. Apathetic, anemic, overworked, she
yet never dreamed of considering herself or her children abused,
accepting her lot as the natural one of woman, who was created to be a
child-bearer, and to keep man well fed and comfortable. The only
variation from the deadly monotony of her mechanical and unceasing
labor was found in her habit of irritability with her stepchild. She
considered Tillie "a dopple" (a stupid, awkward person); for though
usually a wonde