wherever
there's a chance."

But the good old woman only wrung her hands, and exclaimed:

"Thar's a lovely experience completely spiled--completely spiled!"

At length she was quieted and escorted home, and a few days afterward
appeared, in smiles and the new bombazine, at the captain's wedding.

The bride, a motherless girl, speedily adopted Mrs. Simmons as mother,
and made many happy hours for the old lady; but that venerable and pious
person is frequently heard to say to herself, in periods of
thoughtfulness:

"A lovely experience completely spiled!"

[Illustration: THE CAPTAIN BURST INTO A LAUGH, WHICH MADE THE
MINISTER'S CHANDELIERS RATTLE.]

MISS FEWNE'S LAST CONQUEST.

How many conquests Mabel Fewne had made since she had entered society no
one was able to tell. Perhaps the conqueror herself kept some record of
the havoc she had worked, but if she did, no one but herself ever saw
it. Even such of her rivals as were envious admitted that Miss Fewne's
victims could be counted by dozens, while the men who came under the
influence of that charming young lady were wont to compute their
fellow-sufferers by the hundred. It mattered not where Miss Fewne spent
her time: whether she enjoyed the season in New York or Washington,
Baltimore or Boston, she found that climatic surroundings did not in the
least change the conduct of men toward her. In what her attractions
especially consisted, her critics and admirers were not all agreed.
Palette, the artist, who was among her earliest victims, said she was
the embodiment of all ideal harmonies; while old Coupon, who at sixty
offered her himself and his property, declared in confidence to another
unfortunate that what took him was her solid sense. At least one young
man, who thought himself a poet, fell in love with her for what he
called the golden foam of her hair; a theological student went into
pious ecstasy (and subsequent dejection) over the spiritual light of her
eyes. The habitual pose of her pretty fingers accounted for the awkward
attentions of at least a score of young men, and the piquancy of her
manner attracted, to their certain detriment, all the professional beaus
who met her. And yet, a clear-headed literary Bostonian declared that
she was better read than some of his distinguished _confreres_; while a
member of Congress excused himself for monopolizing her for an entire
half-hour, at an evening party, by saying that Miss Fewne talked
politics