into the open streets. A significant incident is the fact that on the Lincoln centenary hardly a child could be seen without a miniature flag, picture of Lincoln, or newspaper clipping relating to the great emancipator. The birthdays of our illustrious Americans furnish excellent opportunities for impressing upon these children the salient facts of our national history and we cannot believe that the lesson is wholly lost.

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you that the general outlook is decidedly hopeful. Strictly speaking, the terms foreign" and alien" are misnomers as applied to the residents of the North End, for the element we are apt to designate as un-American is adopting surely, if slowly, our standards of living and thought.

A stone's throw from old Copp's Hill Burying Ground is the Hull Street Settlement and Medical Mission Dispensary, whose work among the resident population deserves commendable notice. Practical service appears to be the watchword of these earnest worker's and theirs the type of missionary effort that is at once philanthropic and patriotic. The work is twofold-medical and socialeach department supplementing that of the other. Here are classes in nursing, sewing, dressmaking, and embroidery, benefiting parents and "little mothers' alike.

down from heaven and hung a lantern in the old steeple as a sign from heaven. From that time the religious attitude of the Bostonians showed a marked change.

The visitor to this section of Boston will doubtless ask, and pertinently, "What is the future of these alien races? Does this foreign population make for good citizenship?" These questions can be best answered by the settlement worker. In most cases she will assure

It is a trite truth, but one that cannot be over-emphasized, that the real missionaries are the children and in proportion as they are impressed with American ideals, will the results in the next generation prove enduring. They certainly evince a genuine desire to learn, and one encouraging feature of this settlement work is the fact that improvements in the home are traceable directly to the little ones who pass on to their mothers that which they have been taught.

Better than any number of statistics will a glance at one of the classes show the visitor the promising nature of this work. If you enter the class room of the little nurses more than one chair will be offered you with a smiling and ready courtesy. Again, as you depart, you will receive from your small hostesses a cordial invitation to come again. The anatomical knowledge displayed by these girls is such as to put to shame many a grown-up. Indeed, SO inexhaustible seemed their fund of information as almost to warrant the remark of one young nurse, who sighed, "Oh, we know everything!' Practical application of principles is not overlooked, and there is an abundance of drill work in such demonstrations as bandaging, massaging, restoring the drowned, etc. The treasurer of the class collects a penny from each member at all meetings, and ex

plains that the sum thus raised is to aid in fresh air work or some other form of practical charity. Surely this education of the mind and heart will bear desired fruit in season.

An appropriate close to the day's ramble is a walk around the ancient cemetery to the public park at its base. Here it is a relief to breathe freely once more and inhale a whiff of salt air from the harbor. This breathing space is truly a godsend to the tenement dwellers in the vicinity and especially is the playground along the water's edge appreciated. From the recreation pier the children can see the old Constitution," a fitting reminder that they belong to an American nation. For though this new country may be the home of their fathers and mothers only by adoption, it claims their own loyalty by closer and more lasting ties.

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T

HE following day, at noontime, Glen had occasion to go into the private office of his employer with some correspondence. After learning what he required, regarding the question some letters had raised concerning a new import duty on certain hides, Glen was stopped, midway to the door, by Mr. Boynton, who said, somewhat hesitatingly:

Ah, Mr. Noble. Ah my that is, Mrs. Boynton surprised me at lunch. last evening by telling me that she, that is, that she and her mother had met you somewhere up-country during one of their summer visits. That, in fact, you had rendered quite a service to them on the occasion of their having been lost in the mountains. I was going to say (a-hem), that is, that it was indeed a very an odd, that is, happy coincident that Mrs. Boynton should meet you here. I was going to say, that is, that I have thought very well of your work since you have been with us. am, as one might say, an up-country man myself. I was thinking, that is-a, I was about to say, that I should like first rate to see something more of you than is possible in the routine of business; hear a little something-a, that is, of how things are going in old New England. I that is, if you could make it convenient (hem), I'd like to have you at the house, say (hem) Thursday evening, to lunch. We'd a try, that is, to make it pleasant for you."

I

Although the great financier spoke laboriously and at evident loss for words to fittingly clothe his invitation, at the same time cloaking his real feeling, of the two Glen was the most perturbed in spirit.

He realized fully that, under the ex

isting man and master order of social and business usage which has grown up under the woeful system of rating men by what they have, not by what they are, his employer was forcing himself to commit a grievous breach, contrary to his wont and training, in thus inviting a lowly employe to partake of his hospitality on an even plane with his other guests of social and business equality.

And Glen knew, also intuitively, that his employer was so doing purely at the instance of his young wife, who, regarding their union as a commercial bargain, proposed to get, in exchange for her youth and beauty, all she deemed due her, both in tangible goods and in gratification of her tastes and passions.

He, the employe, could not well offend by declining, so, after accepting with due expression of simulated pleasure, the invitation tendered, Glen went back to his high stool and ledger with a conflict of emotions in his heart, amid which was a resentment, near to anger, against the girl he had loved, for her part in the drama in which Fate had cast him such an unwilling player.

But as he more and more considered the several phases of the situation had shifted them into varying juxtaposition, he grew more charitable and ended, as such kindly natures are prone to, by condemning himself for unduly magnifying his own interests in the premise, and making out of what Jessica had undoubtedly meant as a mere kindly overture to a stranger in the city a mountain of evil conjecture and impropriety.

He resolved to not only go, but to show by his demeanor that he appreciated her kindness and was as capable of forgetting and forgiving as she, and as ready, in all charitableness before what had been

to accept, over the ashes of his love, her kindly overture of unselfish friendship without malice and without remorse.

On Thursday evening, therefore, a dry sparkling early winter's night he left Alec and his mother snugly ensconced in their new up-town flat, the former with a new volume of Meredith and his mother just turning the heel of a blue, woolen sock, and walking briskly by the way of Eighth Avenue and across the park he soon came before the long row of pillared and porticoed mansions, one of which he knew to be the residence of the Boyntons.

He was a little surprised that the windows of the stately dwelling were not more brightly illuminated. Only a dim light showed from the lower front windows and a brighterone from the main entrance. He had supposed that, even for a formal little dinner, such as he was invited to, more evidences of preparation and gayety would be apparent.

However, smilingly acknowledging to himself his superficial knowledge concerning the social usages of the city, but confident that he had made no mistake in the time announced, he mounted the marble steps with their flanking prostrate lions, and touched the electric knob.

At once a beefy, blue liveried individual drew open the mansion door, and Glen, laying his card on the extended silver tray and being relieved of his top coat and hat was ushered by an automatic movement of the servant into the dim-lit reception room to the right.

The house was silent as a tomb, with that heavy, luxuriant silence of such establishments, where heaviness and luxuriance reign, and seated on a Chippendale chair surrounded by somber furniture of the Flemish Renaissance, deep, India hangings and rare ornamentations bathed in the dim, bluish light from the crystal chandelier, Glen wondered vaguely if, somehow, he had made a mistake.

And then Jessica was before him, coming so silently over the deep carpets, the soft material of her rich gown making no sound, that she was like an apparition before she spoke and dispelled the illusion

Jessica, more beautiful than even

Glen had ever conjured her, as contrary with her youth and freshness and vivacity from her somber surroundings as a rose from the gardens of Los Alamos in the tomb of Hadrian.

"O Glen," she breathed, extending her soft, white hand, as he rose to greet her. "How pleased I am to see you. You are not displeased that I asked you to come?" she said, inquiringly, looking up into his face with a strange wistfulness, as she noted a hesitancy in his manner.

"Displeased?" he repeated, laughing gently, in spite of himself at her odd little manner, so girlishly, naïvely opposite to the mannerisms he had observed in others of her equal station, and which he presumed she too could well act on occasion.

"No, indeed," he said, with more warmth than he had intended. "I was very pleased to come. Am I too early, or too late, or is your dinner party' Jessica interrupted him with a merry, unaffected laugh.

"Oh, I've been such a wayward girl, as usual," she exclaimed. "I've got such a scandalous confession to make. You're the whole party, Glen, and I'm host and hostess in one."

A shadow crossed Glen's troubled countenance and she drew nearer to him and made endeavor to laugh it away.

You see it was this way," leading the way to a divan. "It began all right. We did intend to have a select little dinner party and the theater after, but one of the dyspeptic old directors or something of one of the big corporations with which my — with which Mr. Boynton," she substituted, laughing and coloring and circling one knee impulsively with her clasped hands, "is closely connected, went and died. Nothing to do but the whole gilded colony must go into mourning and all invitations to social events must be recalled.

"Oh dear," she sighed, with an amusing little pucker on her brow, "but confession isn't pleasant, even if it is good for the soul. Well," bringing both tiny feet down onto the floor and leaning her elbow on the arm of the couch and her chin in her palm, looking Glen squarely in the face," I sent out regrets, withdrawing all the invitations to dinner

excepting one. That one, to you I - I forgot," and she sank back amid the cushions like a child, fearing a reprimand, yet too thoroughly imbued with mischief to actually care.

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And your husband?" asked Glen, scarcely knowing just how to voice his. perplexity.

"Gone to Philadelphia," said Jessica, a vicious little metallic ring in each word, and Glen almost groaned.

"And not to keep one iota of my terribleness from you," continued Jessica, still in the depths of the cushions, "I've sent his maiden sister out to an allevening meeting of the Woman's Advancement League, with instructions on the side to the coachman that he needn't go for her until I ring, so, excepting for the servants, we're as alone for the next few hours as as a couple on the top of, say Sugarloaf Mountain. But," Jessica exclaimed, a new tone in her voice, rising and standing before Glen, who had also risen, "there's no harm in even that. I have a right to receive whom and when I choose, and I hold myself wholly accountable. I'm not responsible for sudden deaths in the directorate, and if the Woman's League meets to-night it's not my fault," and she pulled a silken tasseled cord that hung by the wall.

But," Glen started to say, fully alive to the spurious specie of Jessica's amusing argument in rebuttal, but before he could. say more a passive-faced servant was standing at the door announcing that dinner was served.

Too well bred to make anything like a scene, but conscious of the impropriety of the trend of events, Glen offered his arm to Mrs. Boynton, as he would have done before a roomful, and, Jessica, her old self again, laughing and drawing him out, full of delight that her "terribleness" was succeeding admirably, they moved down the long hall and into the pretty and bright-lit breakfast room, where, for this occasion, Jessica had directed the table should be laid, to the silent horror of the butler.

When soup had been served, Jessica, unmindful wholly of the two servants, who stood like gorgeous mannikins behind.

the chairs, insisted upon an unabridged recital of all the events that had transpired in Stonestead and vicinity since Christmas, a year ago.

Needless to say Glen told only so much of the story as he chose, and Jessica knew she was not getting it all.

By the time that dessert was reached both young people had imperceptibly drifted back to a footing of old-time companionship. Glen was all but forgetting that he was a guest of his employer, under circumstances the reverse of formal, and Jessica was drolly, radiantly, supremely happy with the present, and care free of the future. When Glen led her to the drawing-room opening from the breakfast room, and the draperies fell back to their place in the doorway, they were again boy and girl together on the up-country hills, and the events of the past year, so ominous in fact, were for the nonce as though they had never been.

Jessica, seating herself on a couch, motioned Glen to a chair near by. The small, dull radiance of globed electric light was over and about the room, and for a time they talked quietly of many things.

A subdued tinkle of silver and glass came now and then from the diningroom beyond, but soon such sounds ceased and the apartment, save for their low voices and occasional light laughter, was silent.

"Of course you will think me terrible," Jessica was saying, "for contriving this harmless little escapade. I guess I never shall be really formal. O Glen," she almost moaned, drawing nearer to him, her arm flung over a supporting pillow, "if you know what a traitor I really am to the conventionalities of the life I lead; how I hate, sometimes, the golden fetters I have put on; what overt acts I do as regards the code etiquette; how, sometimes, I even hate myself for the base contradictions that I am."

She spoke rapidly, her whole being changed with the new intensity of her feelings. Neither noted the far depths of confidential relations into which they were drifting, and unconsciously Glen's hand dropped from his side touching