reat distances, bells were useful to call them together when there was
to be a church service. But now, when the churches are always open on
Sunday, and every congregation knows the hour of services and all have
clocks, bells are not only useless, but they are a terrible nuisance to
invalids and nervous people. If I am ever so fortunate as to be elected
a member of a town council, my first efforts will be toward the
suppression of bells.

To encourage one of my sex in the trying profession of book agent, I
purchased, about this time, Dr. Lord's "Beacon Lights of History," and
read the last volume devoted to women, Pagan and Christian, saints and
sinners. It is very amusing to see the author's intellectual wriggling
and twisting to show that no one can be good or happy without believing
in the Christian religion. In describing great women who are not
Christians, he attributes all their follies and miseries to that fact.
In describing Pagan women, possessed of great virtues, he attributes all
their virtues to Nature's gifts, which enable them to rise superior to
superstitions. After dwelling on the dreary existence of those not of
Christian faith, he forthwith pictures his St. Teresa going through
twenty years of doubts and fears about the salvation of her soul. The
happiest people I have known have been those who gave themselves no
concern about their own souls, but did their uttermost to mitigate the
miseries of others.

In May, 1885, we left Johnstown and took possession of our house at
Tenafly, New Jersey. It seemed very pleasant, after wandering in the Old
World and the New, to be in my own home once more, surrounded by the
grand trees I so dearly loved; to see the gorgeous sunsets, the
twinkling fireflies; to hear the whippoorwills call their familiar note,
while the June bugs and the mosquitoes buzz outside the nets through
which they cannot enter. Many people complain of the mosquito in New
Jersey, when he can so easily be shut out of the family circle by nets
over all the doors and windows. I had a long piazza, encased in netting,
where paterfamilias, with his pipe, could muse and gaze at the stars
unmolested.

June brought Miss Anthony and a box of fresh documents for another
season of work on vol. III. of our History. We had a flying visit from
Miss Eddy of Providence, daughter of Mrs. Eddy who gave fifty thousand
dollars to the woman suffrage movement, and a granddaughter of Francis
Jackson of Boston, who a