Our fair lasted a whole week. Poor John didn't have one of his favorite little puddings for a month. I always do my nice cooking myself. Of course the girl had all she could attend to with Johnnie to look after, and everything to see to while I was away so much on this fair business.

But John is the best man in the world. He never said one complaining word till the very last day, as I sipped my coffee at the breakfast table-I was too tired to eat a morsel-he says, "Kitty, is this the last day of the fair?"

her mouth she always has when she is going to do something that is hard to do, and going to do it well. She looked just exactly as she did that night so many years ago, when we girls gave the First Regiment of Blanktown volunteers who left for the war, a silk flag, and she made the presentation speech. She was Mary Noble then, and although we younger girls didn't know it, was engaged to Colonel Lesley.

Mrs. Gray pretended that she disliked the publicity of this formal presentation. I overheard her telling her most intimate friend that "it tried her beyond description

"Well," he returned, "I am not quite clear about Johnnie's mother having a right to kill herself over a fair. And I shall not be sorry to have a wife once more, of an evening, myself."

I was so tired and nervous I burst right out crying at that. And John tried to comfort me, bless his heart! He said he didn't mean to blame me, and was just as good as he always is when I have been doing and doing until I'm all worn out.

I was not the only tired woman in Blanktown I can tell you! You never saw such a jaded looking set of table-tenders as we were that last evening, in your life; and cross-my patience! Even Mrs. Lesley, who is generally too sweet-tempered, and Mrs. Gray, who is generally too lady-like, to be outwardly ruffled, spoke to each other in what I should call rather a snappish manner, if they were not of the aristocracy.

Mrs. Lesley looked sick, and I was real anxious about her. You see we were going to close with a little public meeting. The gentlemen who were to receive our money were to make speeches, and our President was to make a statement of our work. Of course she must not give out till that was over, and I insisted on her going home to rest in the afternoon. I thought then that the worst of her weariness came from her feeling so badly over what seemed to her violation of principle in our fair.

Well, she came back with her eyes as bright as could be, and two little red spots

address before a promiscuous audience. She did not consider it quite womanly."

But for the life of me I could not see that it was any more public to make a speech than to march around our largest hall, dressed in old style, before almost our whole town, as we did at the Centennial Tea-Party, and Mrs. Gray, who was President of the Ladies' Centennial Committee, led that herself, dressed magnificently as Martha Washington. Mrs. Lesley would not take part in that at all. She said it was putting our personal charms on exhibition, before all sorts of people, and she was doubtful of its propriety. I, you see, am not so particular as either of them. I am always glad and proud to have Mrs. Lesley make a speech, and I enjoyed that Centennial Tea-Party to the last degree. I went as Priscilla, and John said I looked the sweetest of any woman there, if I wasn't so dashing and elegant as Mrs. Gray. But I shall never get this story told.

We had sold off nearly everything at nine o'clock. We made an auction with the leavings, and they got my John, who is just as witty as he can be, to sell; and he made a world of fun.

At half past nine, Mr. Lesley, who is President of the men's society, of which ours is auxiliary, led his wife up to her seat on the stage. Of course, we had made the platform lovely with flowering plants and bouquets.

Then we had some long, tiresome speeches from the men, full of compliments on our

energy and management. I was sick of it before they stopped. For, if I am not very wise, I know when anybody praises me just for the sake of what they are going to get! Well, finally Mrs. Lesley's turn came. She stepped forward gracefully, and stood at the front of the platform. She must have looked just like a pink between those high, green, leaf-plants. She is not handsome like her sister-in-law, but she has the sweetest expression!

I would give anything to be able to repeat her speech, word for word. But, dear me! I might just as well undertake to paint a sunset! I can only give you an idea of it.

She began, "Mr. President”—it was her own husband, you know—"it now becomes my duty to render an account of the efforts of the Ladies' Auxiliary in behalf of our common and well-beloved cause; and to deliver into your hands the substantial results of those labors. I had hoped to do this with pride and joy. But, although the pecuniary gain of this fair is unprecedented in our town, and the sum of money I am commissioned to present to you is larger than I had even dreamed it could be, I discharge this crowning obligation of my official position with shame and distress!"

I could hardly believe my ears! I glanced over at Mrs. Gray, and I never saw such a look of astonishment as there was on her face.

Mrs. Lesley went on, her voice getting full of tears, though her eyes were as dry and bright as her diamonds. She said,-in substance, you know, as the reporters say,— that the cause of her shame and distress was her conviction that our fair had been a positive injury to the morals of our town. She said it had trained young, modest girls in bold importunity of men whom they had never met before; it had cultivated in young men that love of games of chance which was filling our gambling saloons with the very flower of our youth. She said, too, that she was convinced that she and her co-laborers had been treating the regular trades-people unfairly. She had overheard one night a conversation between two young men, who had started in the fancy goods business within the last five years. They had spoken

sure

together of the terribly hard times which had threatened them with ruin all the past months, and of how much they had depended on the holiday trade to keep their heads above water this winter. And now, they said, these women, who lived in elegant lei-(I whispered to John, "That don't apply to the Treasurer of the Society, goodness knows!")- these women, who didn't know the value of money any more than children, had gotten up this grand fair. They had, the young men said, begged quantities of goods outright of all the dealers, and had got quantities more at wholesale price, and then sold their splendid and varied assortment below what any retail dealer in town could afford. "Of course," these young merchants said, bitterly, "we cannot compete with fascinating, brilliant women, and bewitching young ladies, who give their services, and sell lower than we can import. The consequence of this fair is that the holiday trade we counted on for food and clothing for our families and for business security is gone out of sight."

"My friends," said Mrs. Lesley, "as President of this Association, and hence responsible, I beg your pardon for the injus tice we have shown you. It was thoughtlessness; but I am humiliated that women of mature years should need to plead a child's excuse."

Then she went on to say that although it would seem at first sight that no such objection could be raised against the sale of articles made by the ladies themselves, there was one similar, and nearly as strong. She said she knew two or three women whose livelihood was gained by the manufacture and sale of fancy trifles. "If," she went on, we sold our goods for prices they could make a fair profit on, we should have a right to compete with them. But we beg the materials from our husbands, give our own work, and then undersell every one in the trade who does not have our immense advantages to start with."

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Then she spoke of the time and strength we women had put into this fair; how some of us had injured our health, and seriously defrauded our homes of what was due from wives and mothers. My conscience smote

me at that, for I couldn't help thinking how I hadn't read aloud to John for three months, and had pushed Johnnie one side till he was getting to be real troublesome, and to talk just like my girl. I sat there with every bone aching and every nerve trembling with weariness, and knew that I had almost, if not quite, unfitted myself for my winter's work for my dear ones by my labor for this fair.

Well, I can't tell you all she said; but I never heard such an eloquent speech, one so simple, and sad, and truthful. Her husband never took his eyes from her face. He could just see her profile from where he sat.

Before she closed she said that all this over-work on the part of us women; all this unfair competition with the regular trade; all this gambling; all this unwomanly boldness of appeal; all these questionable ways of getting money from people who would never contribute to our cause of their own free will-all were justified, and even praised, on the ground of our object being a good one. It was that sophistry which had beguiled us.

"But," she said-I remember the very words she closed with "I acknowledge with shame unspeakable, the utter folly of such justification. Can we do clean work with unclean hands? Can we benefit virtue by the same process which tears it down? Can we get a grand result from despicable ways and means? Oh, my sister women, who are so ready to spend and be spent for others' good, let us leave to men the maxims of worldly-wise policy, and selfish compassing of good ends! We who have had motherhood to teach us that the little duties and the constant spirit are of more importance than noisy deeds and occasional exploits-we should know better! I believe that it is of greater moral moment to society that each human being keep his or her separate channels of influence pure and noble all the time, than that any great 'cause' be aided. Better every benevolent public enterprise be retarded in its external growth for lack of money till our children take our places, than that we defraud those children of a soul-inheritance of faithfulness to justice and honor in daily life."

"Gentlemen," she said, turning and bowing to the Executive Committee of men, as she handed her husband the package of money, (it was in a lovely silk case I made myself,) "Gentlemen, here is the fruit of our labors. That unknown portion which would have been ours to give if we had had no fair, but gone about and begged, in a quiet, dignified way from those able and willing to aid our worthy object, I present you with pride, as the result of our honorable efforts. That other unknown, and I fear much larger portion, which we have won through disobedience to both physical and moral laws, I present you with shame, as the result of our dishonorable labors. I pray you gentlemen, praise us no more! We are yet your superiors if you can truthfully commend us for acts which we ourselves despise."

Well, I tell you, I never heard so still a stillness as there was in that hall while that brave woman was speaking. Even the boys, who had crowded in because we put the admission down low for the last night, kept as quiet as could be.

You may imagine there was a sensation, though! Some of the women were crying and some were just as angry with Mrs. Lesley as they could be. Mrs. Gray had on her most haughty and disgusted look. I believe she would have left the hall if it hadn't been her own brother's wife, and she knew he would never forgive her if she did.

But I'll tell you how I felt about it. I thought we were all real mean to sit still and let our President take on her own shoulders what she considered so wrong, when she wasn't responsible for it in the least, and had tried in every way to prevent it.

And, if you will believe it, I, who never made a speech in my life, and could not if my life depended on it, I just rushed forward in the dead, awful pause that followed Mrs. Lesley's last words, and I didn't stop to say "Ladies and gentlemen," or "Mr. President," or anything; but I broke out just as if I had been all alone in our parlor with John and the canary bird, and said: "I'm not going to let our President blame herself in public for what isn't her fault.

She has done everything she could all the way along to make the rest of us do right. I know she would have resigned her office when she saw how things were going, if it had not seemed unkind to leave us to do what we had planned for her share. I believe just as she does about the gambling part, and I don't know but I do all the rest. But I was more anxious to make money than to make it in the most just and honest way. And that's the way with all of us except Mrs. Lesley. Now we are all through, I am as much ashamed of some things as she is. But nobody need blame her for any thing that has gone wrong!"

You ought to have heard the cheering as I sat down. I was frightened almost into hysterics after I found that I really had spoken in public. John whispered, "You're a brave little cat!"

I didn't dare to look at him, for I was just as near crying as could be. And I couldn't help thinking what a spectacle I should make of myself sobbing on the platform till my eyes and nose were red and swollen, and with nothing but my best lace pocket-handkerchief! I never could cry as the heroines of novels do and look interesting all the while. My tears always make me resemble a boiled lobster.

Well, the end of it all was, Mr. Lesley, whose place it was to respond, and who hadn't known, it seems, what his wife was going to say, couldn't get up any kind of a speech. He just said he could not help agreeing with the President of the Ladies' Auxiliary in most of her estimate of the influences of the fair, but he hoped the

ladies wouldn't blame themselves too severely for a fault which they were led into by their zeal for the cause, and which had been so frankly confessed.

Then we had a kind of stiff breaking up. Mrs. Gray left the very first one; she couldn't trust herself to speak to "her dear sister," I know. She will be just as mad with me, too, I suppose; but she'll come round again before spring, I'm sure. For if I am in what she calls "very limited circumstances," I have some nice little garden parties in summer that she doesn't like to miss.

Mrs. Lesley came up to me as I was looking up my china dishes, and said with tears in her eyes: "Dear Mrs. Busybody, I shall never forget it."

Going home John said: "What a magnificent woman that Mrs. Lesley is, Kitty! But I should think it would be a good deal like climbing up Mount Washington all the time to have her for a wife. I'd rather have a little Kitty like you for a steady diet.”

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"Yes," I said, "John, I know you would; and I am very glad of that. But I feel like a very insignificant valley beside her."

"Never mind, Puss; Love is of the valley,'" quoted John.

Tired as I was I had to laugh at that. For John is so matter-of-fact and prosy that I have never been able to make him remember any poem but Tennyson's "Princess;" and the only reason he has kept that in mind enough to quote from it is because I read it to him that summer when he—well, the year before we were married.

Anna C. Garlin.

Of his letters to me I have on my table today one hundred and fifty; the last written in the tremulous hand of one who had entered on his ninety-first year. It was through him that I became acquainted with Mr. Allston, who had left Boston and came to reside in Cambridgeport in 1830-soon after his

marriage with a sister of Mr. Dana. Not far from the house he lived in he had built himself a painting room fitted to receive the canvas of his large picture of Belshazzar's Feast.

Mr. Allston at that time was about fifty years of age; nearly twice as old as myself. But disparity of years did not prevent our becoming friends. Not a week went by without my going to see him; nearly always in company with Mr. Dana. We knew his way of living. It was not a good one for vigorous health and a prolonged old age. He took no exercise; neither walked nor rode. He paid no visits and rarely went from home save to church on Sundays, stopping for a little while after service at Mr. Dana's. On week days, after breakfast, it was his wont to get into his studio where seldom any one ever found admittance. There all day long he painted and smoked until the last gleam of daylight was gone, when he went home to his dinner. That over, he set himself to reading or writing till deep into night-still smoking his sempiternal cigar. He was always, I believe, unaffectedly glad to see us. I have his image vividly before my mind's eye: his face, with its peculiar and I had almost said its wonderful benignity of expression, his voice and its tones so singularly mellifluous, and the clearness and simplicity, the flosssilk-like delicacy and exquisite unconscious choiceness of his language and style of expression; these things made him one of the most charming talkers I ever listened to. Ah, those nights! No wonder they were so often protracted far beyond the "wicked hour of night" as he was wont to call it. Sometimes he would read to us things he had been writing when we went in. Sometimes too he told us stories about himself and others, and numberless anecdotes about the great artists, poets and thinkers and men of letters in England that he lived so much with when thereWest and Reynolds, Wordsworth, Southey, Sir George Beaumont, Fuseli, Charles Lamb and Coleridge. He took also a lively interest in the discussion of all subjects of art and literature, and all questions of philosophy and religion. I wish I had a phono

graphic record of the talk of those evenings. But I kept no notes or memoranda.

Of the stories he used to tell I remember only two or three. One of these was his "Canada Ghost Story," which I have printed in a disquisition on Dreams, Presentiments and Visions in a recent volume of Essays and Sketches. It is there related substantially as I had it from him; and he himself told it to so many others besides myself and they undoubtedly again to others, that I presume it must be familiar to a good many persons. Still it may be agreeable to some of my present readers if I reproduce it here.

Allston had it from the late Sir George Beaumont, who received it from Barrington the artist, who heard it at Boswell's table as told there by a certain General Wyndham (I think that is the name), who some years before had been in command of a fortress in Canada. He was sitting one day at his dinnertable with his back towards the door of the ante-room. Sir John Sherbrooke, a friend of his, sat at the other end of the table with his face towards the ante-room door. Sitting thus Sir John saw a person in a military undress enter and pass up the diningroom, going towards a bedroom beyond, which had no door but the one communicating with the dining-room, and the windows of which opened upon a perpendicular descent of seventy feet sheer. General Wyndham, meantime, from his position could not see the person until he passed up the dining-room so far as to come within the range of his eye; then he suddenly sprang up exclaiming, "My God! there's my brother!" Wyndham and his friend both followed into the bedroom. No one was in the room! [And the notion of any exit from it through the window was not to be entertained.] A memorandum was made of the time of this appearance. Six months afterwards General Wyndham received intelligence of the death of his brother in India. The time of his death was found to tally to a moment with that of the appearance in Canada.

There is a second part to this story related by a Scottish lady, a Mrs. Stewart (I think was the name), who said she knew Sir John