still hung there; but the walls were covered now with choice
paintings,--donations from the rapidly increasing alumnae, and from
friends of the school. Here the art scholars found much to interest
and instruct them, not only in the pictures, but in the models and
designs, which had been selected with both taste and skill.

There was a cabinet of minerals; but this was by no means a favorite
with the pupils, though here and there a diligent student might be
seen possibly reading "sermons in the stones," who could tell!

There seemed, indeed, nothing to be wanting for the "higher education"
for which the institution was designed, but that the pupils should
accept and improve the privileges offered them.

Marion Parke was not the only one who found herself confused by the
sudden wealth of opportunity surrounding her. Other pupils had come
from the north and the south, the east and the west, many from homes
where few, if any, of the advantages of modern life had been known.
That Marion should have appreciated, and to some extent have
appropriated, them as readily as she did, is a matter of surprise,
unless her educated Eastern parents are remembered, also the amenities
of her parsonage home. Certain it is, that watching her as so many
did, and as is the common fate of every new pupil, there was not
detected any of the "verdancy" which so often stamps and injures the
young girl. It was the girl next to her who leaned both elbows on the
table, and put her food into a capacious mouth on the blade of her
knife.

It was the one nearly opposite her that talked with her mouth so full
she had difficulty in making herself understood; and another, half-way
up the table, to whom Miss Barton, the teacher who presided, had
occasion to say, when the girl, having handled several pieces of cake
in the cake-basket, chose the largest and the best,--

"Whatever we touch here, Maria, we take."

A hard thing for Miss Barton to say, and for the girl to hear; but it
must be remembered that this is a training as well as a finishing
school, and that there is an old adage with much truth in it, that
"manners make the man."

It may seem a thing almost unnecessary and unkind to suggest, that
even the most brilliant scholarship could not give a girl a high
standing in a school of this kind, if it were unaccompanied with the
thousand little marks of conduct which attest the lady.

Maria, after her rebuke from Miss Barton, left the table in a