nd respectable in their appearance, and fervent
in their devotions as only the Irish peasantry can be.

The pastor, an intelligent young Irishman, apparently under thirty, had
already said Mass at Pleasantville, six miles distant, and upon
arriving at Mount Kisco he found that about twenty of his small
congregation wished to receive Communion, as it was a festival;
consequently, he spent the next hour not _literally_ in the
confessional, for there was none, but in the tiny closet dignified by
the name of a vestry. From thence, the door being open, we could with
ease, had we had nothing better to do, have heard all of the priest's
advice to his penitents.

This ceremony over, the young Father came out in his black cassock, and
taking up his vestments which lay upon the altar-steps, he proceeded
with the utmost nonchalance to put them on, not hesitating to display a
long rent in his surplice, and a decidedly ragged sleeve.

The Mass was a Low one, and the congregation were too poor to have an
organ or organist. Quite a contrast to a Sunday at St. Stephen's or
St. Francis Xavier's, but the _Mass_ is always the same, however humble
the surroundings.

_June 3_.

We are unusually fortunate, I think, in our domestic surroundings.
Servants are proverbially the _bete noire_ of American ladies, and the
prospect of having to train some unskilled specimens of foreign
peasantry weighed heavily, I fancy, upon our beautiful Ida in her new
responsibility of a young _Dame Chatelaine_. However, we have been, as
I said, singularly successful in obtaining servants.

To my great delight, there is not one ugly name in our little
household, although composed of eight members, commencing with _Queen_
Esther as mamma has been named; then we four girls--_la Dame
Chatelaine_, with her fair face, dark, pensive eyes, and modest
dignity; Gabrielle, or _Tourbillon_, our brilliant pet, and the
youngest of our quartette, although her graceful figure rises above the
rest of us; my sister Marguerite, _la Gentille Demoiselle_; and I,
Cecilia.

Then come the household retinue: Bernard, the coachman, already
introduced, a smart-looking young Irishman, whom the maids always find
very beguiling; Lina, the autocrat of the kitchen, a little,
wiry-looking woman from Stockholm, formerly cook, so _she_ says, to
King Charles of Sweden; and Minna, the maid.

Minna is a pretty young Bavarian, who has been only fifteen days in the
Land of Liberty, but