All round the year the brave hearts beat, Warm life, and love, and happiness All round the year the trusting soul That folds our lesser sphere,— Then mourn not, friend, the cutting air, But one great Power is over all: If, thro' the ceaseless round of change, Elaine Goodale. TO THE ELECT LADY. SOLOMON said, "Though thou shouldest bray a fool in a mortar among wheat with a pestle, yet will not his foolishness depart from him." This is good authority for be lieving that argument and exhortation are not made for everybody, but only for the elect. The principle knows no sex, and, with all our chivalry and gallantry, we must expect to see some women resolutely wearing the cap and bells. Our comfort is in knowing that feminine instinct and acute ness are on the side of wisdom rather than folly, and we may hope for a larger number of elect ladies than of wise men. It is to these elect ladies we desire to address some hints touching their personal habits in society, of which they form so influential a part. A Christianity that does not affect the social life must be a barren sentiment instead of a pervading spirit. It can neither renovate the man nor convert the world. A mummy is very good in a museum, but quite useless in the street and market-place. A Christian lady ought to be a very positive force toward improvement in the region where her faculties have chief play and power; and any yielding on her part to the false methods around her is so far a renun, ciation of her Christianity. Any excuse that she is only one, and can therefore accomplish nothing, is altogether unchristian; for the cardinal axiom of the Christian is that God is the majority, and that He is on our side. A Christian lady can afford to be brave, and, single-handed, act the true reformer. It is a singular thing in our civilized condition, that in families that are raised above the necessity of hard labor for their main tenance the boys are always brought up to work and the girls as surely brought up to be idle. The boys after leaving school or college naturally gravitate to commerce, law, medicine, science or divinity; but the girls at a like period begin to play the fine lady, spending their day in pretty idleness. Dressing, visiting, attending receptions or parties, reading very light literature, playing upon the piano-these are the staple modes of using or abusing the best hours of life. The only question that seems to be asked is, "How can I best amuse myself." You see at once what a hot-house culture of selfishness this is. Is the girl ever going to be married? Then she is here preparing to be an encumbrance, not a help-meet, to her husband. The thousand and one occasions of married life which call for self-denial will only provoke discontent and fretful opposition in a mind thus trained to self-indulgence. I have no doubt that much domestic misery comes from the harshness and unsympathetic nature of the husband, but I also have no doubt that a full share of it comes directly from the utter selfishness of the wife, brought up to have nothing to do but to seek her own trifling gratification. Many a time, indeed, the husband's lack of sympathy is the result of the carelessness of the spoiled young wife. Now, elect lady, put the axe at the root of the evil. Teach your daughters to perform some useful tasks daily and regularly. If your housekeeping does not afford scope enough for this, apportion to them useful works for the neighbors. There are the poor to visit and assist, there are the sick to whom they may minister, if it be only to carry a cheering bunch of flowers. Lay out each day's duties for each on the evening previous. Bring up the maidens to the great idea that life is for work, and that play-time is only for recreation, and they will soon discover that there is a higher happiness in work than in play. Young women thus trained will attract sensible young men, and not perfumed beaux, and marriages may be expected that will ensure domestic comfort and harmony with mutual helpfulness of husband and wife. Can it be that to such a scheme you prefer the butterfly life of a fashionable girl for your daughter? To your eyes is there a fascination in the ball-room and its childish prattle? Is talk of dances and dresses your ideal of conversation? Do you count costume and decoration subjects on which the mind grows strong? You are old enough to have a better judgment. But, perhaps, you are willing to endure these follies in your child and to encourage them for the sake of winning a rich husband for her as the prize. I would first like to ask you, elect lady, if rich husbands are confined to fashionable society. And then I would suggest the question whether rich husbands are generally the best husbands. If you can make out an affirmative to both these questions, then I will grant that you have some color for your course. Now the lack of a rich husband does not imply the getting a poor husband. There is a large region between riches and poverty, the region which Agur considered the happy land; a region where a sufficiency to sustain does not become a redundancy to enervate; and it strikes me that the best material for husbands is found in this vita media. Moreover the youth who is never so happy as in his party dress is not apt to appreciate anything that has a soul in it, and I believe your daughter has a soul; or am I mistaken? Perhaps you have another reason for endorsing the butterfly theory. Perhaps you have a notion that if your daughter is out of "society" she might as well be in Sahara or Kamschatka, and you have brought yourself to believe that the only "society" on earth is that which is distinguished by white kid gloves and "germans." Did you ever soberly think of the possibility of life outside of the charmed circle? It is humbly believed by some that men and women, both some reading and for valuable house enterprises! Now I take it, elect lady, that you will have a more respectable opinion of yourself and daughters when you leave the vulgar crowd of fashion, and seek truth rather than show. You will wonder why you ever exposed your life to the petty envies, jealousies and ambitions of "society," when the nobler sphere of King Lemuel's mother was open to you. I have said nothing of your Christianity as yet. That has a far-reaching view. That looks beyond marriage and giving in marriage. It sees a life for which this is a preparation. It measures methods and manners here by this view. It demands a soul growing in appreciation of truth, adding to its stores of wisdom, enlarging its area of usefulness, pleasing God rather than man, guarding against worldly seductions, resisting the evil, strengthening the moral faculties, and thus developing the true woman. Does going to a fashionable church on Sundays meet all this? for that is the amount of religious salt in a fashionable woman's life. old and young, who have had brains and Elect lady, I will not insult you with such a question. I hope to meet you and your daughters in Heaven. And I know, and you know, that the way thither does not lead down to Vanity Fair. And so I am quite sure that you and your daughters will be wise women and give the fools a large berth. You will magnify woman and gloHoward Crosby. 2 NICHOLAS HARBOUR'S WORK. So far as I can learn, only one event ever took place at Kerr's Ford. It happened years ago, but it is the gossip of the village to this day; you hear dark allusions to it at tea-parties or the church sewing circle, as to a legend belonging to the far, out-lying regions of iniquity: at the drug-shops or about the stove at the post office, however, it is openly talked of, when the magnates of the village are assembled, and with illy concealed pride. New York and Washington may have their murders and gigantic frauds; but Kerr's Ford, also, has had her mystery, her sensation which, with headlines, filled a column of the county newspaper. The whole story hinges on the appearance of a stranger. Colonel Caldwell, with the Judge, and Phipps the undertaker, claim to have first seen this man; he was coming up the street as they were sitting in front of Bryce's store smoking their cigars after dinner, one October afternoon. "I noticed the man," the Colonel is wont ་ to say. The man, just as the Colonel pronounced this verdict on him, stopped by the curbstone. "There seems to be some kind of public excitement in your town," he said, with a hint of amusement in his tone; "What is it?" "A church fair," said Bryce, always civil to a possible patron of the barrel of whiskey kept on tap at the back of the store. "Church fair?" staring at the little, very new, very Gothic stone house at the foot of the hill. "Religious community here, I reckon? Pays a thumping salary? Good fat ground for a young preacher to settle down in, heh?" thing in his voice and manner made the men forget his squalid clothes and treat. him as an equal. "He preaches the gospel, sir, because he was called of the Lord to do it. Money would be no temptation to him. He belongs, I believe, to one of the wealthiest families in Western New York-the Harbours." "Harbour?" with a sudden stride, which brought his eager, lean face close to Bryce's. "Nicholas Harbour?" "Yes, his name is Nicholas. Here he comes, by the way. You'd better come in and take something," said Bryce uneasily. The clergyman was the embodiment, in his eyes, of gentility as well as godliness, and he had no mind to be seen by him in company with his new companion. "Clergyman, eh? Good income?" muttered the fellow, watching the slight, blackcoated figure as it came alertly up the shaded street. "No, I'll not go in; I want nothing to drink. I've drunk too much already." The men laughed as he slunk quickly away, going down an alley. "I offered a guess," the Colonel used to say, when telling the circumstance, "as to how much liquor he had put out of sight in the year, and I told 'em that he'd cut any man's throat for 'levenpence. But if I'd foreseen that he'd have upturned Kerr's Ford as he did-took out the underpinnings from the foundations, as one might say-me and Phipps, being burgesses, would have made short work with him that very day." The young clergyman came up the street with a quick, buoyant step. The wind was bracing; the sky arched higher to-day over this hill and river than he had ever seen it before; the distance was a vivid, sunny blue. The village lay on rising ground, and stretches of autumn woods and rich, peaceful farms sloped down from it on every side. His church was new, and finished according to his own taste, even to the crimson cushions. (The Judge had wanted dark blue.) His congregation believed that every word in his sermons glowed with holy fire: even the carnal-minded of the village men, like Bryce and Phipps, treated him with a proThe Judge turned sternly on him. Some- found respect. Mr. Harbour did not pre "Yes," said Bryce. "Pretty fair salary. Though our clergyman don't need it. He has a good income of his own." "Oh! A good income?" the man repeated with the same peculiar smile. "A rich man preaching the gospel for a big salary. Yes." cisely describe his position in Kerr's Ford as "good, fat ground on which to camp;" but he certainly did think of it with complacency. It seemed to him as a direct recognition of his virtuous life by Providence; though, being a genuine young fellow at bottom, he did not put this idea into words. His father had been a noted banker, in New York; then a defaulter, then a convict. He had died in prison. His elder son John had inherited the taint of blood. At twenty he was old, and exhausted in dissipation and vice. Nicholas had turned his back upon both father and brother, and with the money left him by a good, Christian mother, had fitted himself for the ministry, and taken this charge on the hills of Pennsylvania. Nobody in Kerr's Ford knew the history of his family. Why should they? He had washed his hands clean of the accursed stain. Now and then he had received begging letters from his brother John, and always sent him money. But the gulf was like that between Dives and Lazarus, and Mr. Barbour had little doubt as to which brother was secure for all eternity. There were many minor causes to-day to contribute to his comfortable complacency. Just below Bryce's store he met a committee of ladies from the church fair: there were two or three portly matrons in black alpacas and blacker fronts; Miss Ann Hyde, thin, watchful and aggressive as a colley driving stupid, fat ewes; and, a little behind, a group of pert, pretty girls. They surrounded him, eager, vehement, all talk ing at once. The Rev. Nicholas listened with an anxiety which he strove to subdue into a benign attention. It hardly suited the dignity of his calling to be concerned about the raffled cake, or grab-bag, and yet it was all important that the church should have a stained rose window. "Pierce has agreed to charge nothing for the dishes, and what do you think, Mr. Harbour, ice cream should be a plate? We don't want to be exorbitant, you know. But people ought to be generous, considering the cause is the Lord's-" "Certainly, certainly. Very good in Pierce, I'm sure," ejaculated the bewildered pastor. "And Miss Sarah Clevedon has consented to assist." The pastor's wandering eye grew steady at this. "Not," pursued Miss Hyde, "that the girl will be of any real use. The most eccentric, unreliable person! But it will give tone to the affair to have her name. The social status of the Clevedons will induce many to take interest in our efforts, who care nothing for a well cooked supper, or even for our noble purpose." Miss Hyde was Corresponding Secretary of the Female Missionary Society. Her language was noted in Kerr's Ford, for its scope and dignity of expression. "We ought not to reckon on such things," said Mr. Harbour gently. "The Master, you know, is no respecter of persons." And yet, as he walked on with them to the hall where the fair was to be held, he knew that he did reckon on these things. "The social status of the Clevedons" weighed not a little with him, even in his feeling for Sarah. It illuminated all his thoughts of that beautiful young person as the gold back-ground does the pictures of medieval Madonnas. He was angry at himself. Could he not keep even his love pure and high-above the paltry level of caste considerations? The young man knew his own weakness. He remembered that once in London, when his cab was stopped at the entrance to a certain street belonging to a noble Duke, because none but liveried equipages were allowed to pass, how he stood for an hour, looking at these privileged conveyances and their occupants with a homage nearly akin to awe. It was absurd to pay the same homage to this village aristocracy--to Sarah's family, with their ancestry of a circuit judge, a country squire, and a far-off signer of the Declaration. But, with the whole population of the county, he did it. Miss Hyde drew him aside when they were within the hall. For twenty years Miss Hyde had been manager of village etiquette, indispensable at wedding, fair or funeral. She had a claim to speak with authority in church matters, different from that of pastor or deacons, but quite as distinctly recognized by the people. "The Holts and Burwells are talking of |