ever been
unpacked since I returned to this country. They are boxed up in a friend's
cellar."

"God bless me, Cornelia!" cried the captain in a muffled tone, "how could
Mr. Van Ness spend his time koo-tooing to cracked pots? He has, as I may
say, the future of Pennsylvania in his hand. When I think what he is doing
for the friendless children--thousands of'em--" The punch had heated the
captain's zeal to the point where words failed him.

After that the friendless children swept lighter subjects out of sight. Mr.
Van Ness, whose humility in this light rose to saintly heights, had all the
statistics of the Bureaux of Charity at his tongue's end. He had studied
the Dangerous Classes in every obscure corner of the world. He could give
you the _status quo_ of any given tribe in India just as easily as the
time-table on the new railway in Egypt. No wonder that he could tell you in
a breath the percentage of orphans, deserted minors, children of vicious
parents, in his own State, and the amount _per capita_ required to civilize
and Christianize them. As he talked of this matter his eyes became
suffused with tears. The great Home for these helpless wards of the State
he described at length, from its situation on a high table-land of the
Alleghanies and the dimensions of the immense buildings down to the
employments of the children and the capacity of the laundry--a perfect
Arcadia with all the modern improvements, where Crime was to be transformed
wholesale into Virtue.

"Where is this institution?" asked Miss Fleming. "It is strange I never
heard of it."

"Oh, it is not built as yet: we have not raised the funds," Mr. Van Ness
replied with a smothered sigh.

The judge patted one foot and looked at him compassionately. It was a
devilishly queer ambition to be the savior of those dirty little wretches
in the back alleys. But if a man had given himself up, body and soul, to
such a pursuit, it was hard measure that he must be thwarted in it.

Miss Fleming also bent soft sympathetic eyes on her new friend. The Home
was not built, eh? Not a brick laid? She wondered whether that box with the
priceless treasures existed in his friend's cellar or in his brain: she
wondered whether he had not seen those pictures of the old masters in
photographs, or whether he had travelled in Japan and the obscure corners
of the earth in the flesh or in books. There was more than the wonted
necessity upon her to establish sympathetic relations w