Faith Gartney's Girlhood

ay, to be put

, to pine with

·

l with crosses

t through comfor

en

ssed since the New Year's

t for months had been making itself heard afar off by its portentous rumbling was h

a people, there are three general classes who re

o may suffer and starve; but who, if by any little saving of a better time they can manage just to buy bread, shall be precisely where they were, practically, when the storm shall have blown over. Between these lies the great middle class-among whom, as on the middle ground, the world's great battle is

s was the Ga

assed days, and forgotten, or unrelished meals. His wife watched him and waited

wn little wants as long as she could, wore her old ribbons, mended last year's discarded gloves, and year

nd writer had received at Washington, for some Congressional reports. Why shouldn't she learn how to do it, and if

Longed almost-if she were once prepared and certain of herself-for even

for nearly a month; despairing at every step, yet persevering; for, beside the grand dre

with the attempt, if her mother had not come to her

ork upon you while you go to school; but I ought not to afford to hav

She felt the present duty upon her; and how could sh

novel, though, or any grown-up book, at first; but a juvenile, at least, she could surely venture on. Look at all the Cousin Maries, and Aunt Fannies, and Sister Alices, whose productions piled the booksellers' counters during the holiday sales, and found their way, sooner or later, into al

ing be made to hold well together. She wouldn't have known what they were, if you had asked her-but the "unities" troubled her. And then the labor loomed up so large before her! She counted the lines in a page of a book

er father gave, already, to ceaseless applications, more than he could positively spare. So every now and then she relinquished in discouragement her aspirations, a

new circumstance would creep into her life

ic combinations may thereby result to them; or that they are in haste to enact the everyday romance-to secure a lover-get married-and set up a life of their own; it is that the ordinary m

ng did

ain such as none but a harassed man of business can ever kn

ad labored through-and that was all. He was like a man fr

been to attend a meeting of creditors of a failed firm,

nd anxious, gazing into his face for a word, after the visit to the sick room was over, Dr. Gracie drew on