anda, the enthusiast cast about her for something
practical to do.

She hit upon the capital idea of flowers. She at once ordered from a
gardener of taste two hundred bouquets, or rather nosegays, which she
intended for distribution among the prisoners she was about to visit,
and she called upon her father for the money.

Then she began to prepare her mind. She wished to define the plan from
which she was to make her contemplations. She settled that she would be
grave and gentle. She would be exquisitely careful not to hold herself
too much aloof, and yet not to step beyond the bounds of that sweet
reserve that she conceived must have been at once Miss Crofutt's sword
and buckler.

Her object was to awaken in the most abandoned criminals a realization
that the world, in its most benignant phase, was still open to them;
that society, having obtained a requital for their wickedness, was ready
to embrace them again on proof of their repentance.

She determined to select at the outset two or three of the most
remarkable monsters, and turn the full head of her persuasions
exclusively upon them, instead of sprinkling (as it were) the whole
community with her grace. She would arouse at first a very few, and then
a few more, and a few more, and so on _ad infinitum_.

It was on a hot July morning that she journeyed on foot over the bridge
which led to the prison, and there walked a man behind her carrying the
flowers.

Her eyes were cast down, this being the position most significant of her
spirit. Her pace was equal, firm, and rapid: she made herself oblivious
of the bustle of the streets, and she repented that her vanity had
permitted her to wear white and lavender these making a combination in
her dress which she had been told became her well. She had no right to
embellish herself. Was she going to the races or a match, or a
kettle-drum, that she must dandify herself with particular shades of
color? She stopped short, blushing. Would Miss Cro----. But there was no
help for it now. It was too late to turn back. She proceeded, feeling
that the odds were against her.

She approached her destination in such a way that the prison came into
view suddenly. She paused, with a feeling of terror. The enormous gray
building rose far above a lofty white wall of stone, and a sense of its
prodigious strength and awful gloom overwhelmed her. On the top of the
wall, holding by an iron railing, there stood a man with a rifle
trailing