y,--

"'Miss Ashton, I'm late. Mark me, will you?'"

"She will keep us straight, then. I vote for Gladys;" and the first to
hold up her hands--both of them--was Missionary Dodd.

So Gladys and Susan were invited to become members of the club, and
accepted gladly, not knowing their room-mates had declined the same
honor.

It was in this way that the club was to influence the rooms.

October, the regal month, when nature puts on her most precious
vestments, dons her crowns of gold, clothes herself in scarlet robes,
with girdles of richest browns, has a half-hushed note of sadness in
the anthems she sings through the dropping leaves, listens for the
farewell of departing birds, and tries in vain to call back to the
browning earth the dying flowers. This month was always considered in
Montrose Academy the time for settling down to hard work in earnest.
Vacation, with its rest and its pleasures, seemed far behind the life
of the two hundred young girls who had entered into, and been absorbed
by, the present, and who were roused by ambitions for the future.

Marion's room-mates went thoroughly into the work required of them.

"Your faithfulness during the first six weeks of the term," Miss
Ashton had said to them in one of her morning talks, "will determine
your standard for the year. Do not any of you think you can be
indolent now, and pick up your neglected studies by and by.

"You may trust my experience when I tell you that, in the whole number
of years since I have been connected with this school, I never knew a
pupil who failed in her duties during the first half of the first term
of the year, who afterwards did, indeed could, make up the lost
opportunities.

"It is not only what you lose out of the passing recitation that you
can never find again, but, of even more consequence, it is what you
lose in forming honest, faithful habits of study.

"There are many different ways of studying. I have often tried to make
these plain to you. I will repeat them. First, learn to give your
whole attention to your lesson; _fix your mind upon it_. This sounds
as if it would be an easy thing to do; but, in truth, it is very
difficult. I am sorry to say I do not think there are a dozen girls
among you who can do this successfully, even after years of training.
You can train your body to accomplish wonders, but it is hard to
believe that the mind is even more capable of being brought into
subjection by the will than the body