as she thought it cruel; consequently they had the range of the
play-house, and Gabrielle fed them very conscientiously. She ought,
however, to have followed the example of St. Francis, who used to
preach to animals and insects when he had no human audience, and given
her pets a daily dissertation upon brotherly love and tolerance, for
they did not, I regret to say, live together in the Christian harmony
that distinguished Barnum's Happy Family. The result was, that one day
when Gabrielle went to minister to their physical wants, she found only
a melancholy _debris_ of little legs. Her supposition was that the
turtle had consumed the toads and then died of dyspepsia, and that the
squirrel had by some unknown means escaped from the play-house, and
returned to primeval liberty.

[Illustration: The Children's Play House.]

Forgetting this sad experience, Gabrielle endeavored at another time to
bring up a snake and a toad in the way they should go (this time in an
empty hen-coop); but the snake certainly did depart from it, and
astonished the family much by gliding into the kitchen with the unhappy
toad in his mouth. Poor Gabrielle's feelings can be imagined. She
endeavored courageously to wrest the toad from its enemy's jaws, but
all in vain; she was obliged to see the hapless creature consumed by
the snake.

Mamma has often described Aunt Mary to me as she looked when she first
met her. The portrait mamma draws of her as a bride would scarcely be
recognized by those who only knew her after long years of weary illness
had

"Paled her glowing cheek."

I will give it in mamma's own words:

"Immediately after your uncle's marriage, he sent for me to come from
my parents' quiet farm in Pennsylvania, to spend the winter in the city
with himself and his wife. A great event this was to me--far greater
than your first visit to Europe, for the journey occupied double the
time that is now spent between New York and Liverpool, and I was a
young girl whose acquaintance with the world was confined to the narrow
limits of the little village of Clymer; I had never even been sent away
to boarding-school.

"One bright September morning I started upon my eventful journey. Your
uncle Barnes drove me in a buggy to Buffalo, a distance of three days
at that time. At this city--the first large one that I had ever seen,
my brother left me in charge of a party going through, as he supposed,
to New York. Then ensued two weeks