ned goods; then crockery. How easy it
is to go from bad to worse, when once we have started upon a downward
course!

Meantime, other effects had been milestoning the course of the Fosters'
splendid financial march. The fictitious brick dwelling had given place
to an imaginary granite one with a checker-board mansard roof; in time
this one disappeared and gave place to a still grander home--and so on
and so on. Mansion after mansion, made of air, rose, higher, broader,
finer, and each in its turn vanished away; until now in these latter
great days, our dreamers were in fancy housed, in a distant region, in a
sumptuous vast palace which looked out from a leafy summit upon a
noble prospect of vale and river and receding hills steeped in tinted
mists--and all private, all the property of the dreamers; a palace
swarming with liveried servants, and populous with guests of fame and
power, hailing from all the world's capitals, foreign and domestic.

This palace was far, far away toward the rising sun, immeasurably
remote, astronomically remote, in Newport, Rhode Island, Holy Land of
High Society, ineffable Domain of the American Aristocracy. As a rule
they spent a part of every Sabbath--after morning service--in this
sumptuous home, the rest of it they spent in Europe, or in dawdling
around in their private yacht. Six days of sordid and plodding fact life
at home on the ragged edge of Lakeside and straitened means, the seventh
in Fairyland--such had been their program and their habit.

In their sternly restricted fact life they remained as of old--plodding,
diligent, careful, practical, economical. They stuck loyally to the
little Presbyterian Church, and labored faithfully in its interests
and stood by its high and tough doctrines with all their mental and
spiritual energies. But in their dream life they obeyed the invitations
of their fancies, whatever they might be, and howsoever the fancies
might change. Aleck's fancies were not very capricious, and not
frequent, but Sally's scattered a good deal. Aleck, in her dream life,
went over to the Episcopal camp, on account of its large official
titles; next she became High-church on account of the candles and shows;
and next she naturally changed to Rome, where there were cardinals and
more candles. But these excursions were a nothing to Sally's. His dream
life was a glowing and continuous and persistent excitement, and he kept
every part of it fresh and sparkling by frequent c