, and that the whole
support of her frail and delicate mother has fallen upon her except that
the two together own their heavily mortgaged little home. A servant
being out of the question, she rises very early in the morning to do as
much of the heavier housework as possible. Her washing, of course, has
to be done on Saturday. Some of us in such a case would be content with
a low standard of cleanliness--but she has an ideal, and her house and
herself fairly sparkle with neatness. Her exquisite cooking is a special
grace of economy, for it makes it possible that a frugal table should
seem to be richly spread. Of course she and her mother must do their
own sewing, and they do it so well that they always have the air of
being dressed as ladies, with great simplicity, to be sure, but with
excellent taste.

At this point, I fancy my readers will make one of two comments. They
will say, "She must have an iron constitution," or "She must spend all
her time on material things. She cannot have a moment for books or
society or travel."

Now she has not an iron constitution. She suffered in her youth from a
wasting disease, and her physician says she was nearer death than any
person he ever knew to recover. This disease has left its traces upon
her. There is hardly a year when she does not have to be out of school a
week or two for illness, and of course sick headaches and trifling
ailments of that kind have to be met every few days.

Nor is it true that the daily necessities absorb her whole life.
Obviously, she cannot be a great reader, or rather it is fortunate she
is not so, for if she spent all her little leisure over books, she would
miss much that is inspiring in her life. But she does care for books,
and particularly for the best books, though her school education was
limited. She reads a tiny daily paper and always takes a leading
magazine. She owns Shakespeare and Scott and Shelley, and knows them
almost by heart. She borrows the best of her friends' books, and
occasionally buys a cheap classic. She always has some volume of
biography or travel from the Public Library, which she reads leisurely
with her mother perhaps. It may take her a month to read some little
volume of two or three hundred pages--such a volume as Bradford Torrey's
"Rambler's Lease," or Dr. Emerson's memoir of his father--and possibly
she may not be able in the end to quote any more fluently from these
books than another who reads them through in a