hould just say, 'See here, my friends, it is not possible for us all
to be rich, whether it is some fixed immutable law of fate, or the lack
of necessary elements in one's character, or the meeting of the right
person with the right circumstances; but the fact is there, true as
judgment. You can be comfortable and clean if you have the energy; and
it is better to scrub your own kitchen-floor, or raise a bushel of
potatoes, than to sit and whine about luck or respectability. Now and
then a ready-made fortune drops down upon one, and I don't know but it
often brings a curse: anyhow, what you work for, you are pretty sure to
enjoy.' It makes me mad when I see healthy, hearty young women sighing
for servants and pianos and what not; when their grandmothers, who had
as good blood, and as good sense, didn't despise honest work."

Sylvie Barry came in while Miss Morgan was in the midst of her "speech,"
as Jack declared it to be; and now she clapped her small white hands,
with a "Bravo!"

"A new disciple, Jack," and she smiled. "Miss Morgan, we shall set you
to reading our favorite authors, and solving the tremendous question.
Where can we get work for these to do? For a great many stand idle in
the market-place, because they have not been hired. What can we set them
at?"

"Well, Miss Barry, I don't know much about the big, outside questions;
but, going around Yerbury a little this winter, I shouldn't say the work
was all done up; or, done in such a poor, thrown-together way, that it
tumbles right to pieces again. There's skewy, ill-made beds with ragged
counterpanes; there's shreds of old ingrain-carpets, that you fall over;
there's broken chairs, and shabby clothes, and dirty corners,--work
enough, I should say, to last some woman an hour or two. She might get
out her pieces of calico, and, with the children's help, make a new
spread, maybe a tidy apron, and she might braid a rag mat out of bits,
and a hundred things that go toward comfort. No: all the work isn't
done up yet, Miss Sylvie," and Jane Morgan stopped just then, to knit
the seam-stitch in a stocking for a poor body.

Sylvie threw herself on the footstool, and leaned her arms on Miss
Morgan's knee.

"I wasn't thinking so much of that when I spoke," she began earnestly;
"but I do wonder if some of us couldn't take it up. There are
art-schools, and music-schools, and cooking-schools, in the great
cities; and why couldn't we start something of the kind here? Poor