ttitudes, to place the
feet aright for Earnest Appeal or Bold Assertion, or to clasp the hands
as directed for Supplication and Earnest Entreaty, the ladies of the
Literary and Home Study Club conned the chapter on American literature,
"containing choice proverbs and literary selections and quotations from
the poets of the old and new worlds." Our merchants found information as
to "Jobbing, Importing and Other Business," and our young ladies could
observe the correct forms for "Letters of Love and Courtship," "Apology
for a Broken Engagement," "French Terms used in Dancing," "Rights of
Married Women," "The Necessity and Sweetness of Home," and
"Marriage--Happiness or Woe may come of It."

Again, Westley Keyts could read how to cut up meats. He knew already,
but this chapter, illustrated with neat carcasses marked off into
numbered squares, convinced him that the book was not so light as some
of its other chapters indicated, and determined him to its purchase.

And there were letters for every conceivable emergency. "To a Young Man
who has quarrelled with his Master," "Dismissing a Teacher," "Inquiry
for Lost Baggage," "With a Basket of Fruit to an Invalid," and "To a
Gentleman elected to Congress." Rare indeed, in our earth life, would be
the crisis unmet by this treasury of knowledge. Not only was there an
elevation of tone in our correspondence that winter, resulting from the
persuasive activities of Mrs. Potts, but our writing became decorative
with flourishes in "the muscular" and "whole-arm" movements. We learned
to draw flying birds and bounding deer and floating swans with scrolls
in their beaks, all without lifting pen from paper. Some of us learned
to do it almost as well as the accomplished Mr. Gaskell himself, and
almost all of us showed marked improvement in penmanship. Doubtless
Truman Baird did not, he being engrossed with oratory, striving to
reproduce, "Hate--the right foot advanced, the face turned to the sky,
the gaze directed upward with a fierce expression, the eyes full of a
baleful light," or other phases of passion duly set down. Not for
Truman was the ornate full-arm flourish; he had observed that all
Congressmen write very badly.

But my namesake may be said to have laid the foundations that winter for
an excellent running chirography, under the combined stimuli of Mr.
Gaskell's curves and a hopeless passion for his school-teacher.

As my own teacher had been my own first love, I knew all tha