A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life.

look in at Miss Craydocke's room with me, who can give

was held tidily in place by a foot of the bedstead and two forward ones each of the table and washstand. On this little green stood her Shaker rocking-chair and a round white-pine light-stand with her work-basket and a few books. Against the wall hung some white-pine shelves with more books,-quite a little circulating library they were for invalids and read-out people, who came to the mountains, like foolish virgins, with scant supply of the oil of literat

w the lilies in the glory of Solomon, and a frosted leaf or a mossy twig, that they can pick up from under their feet and bring home from the commonest walk, comes in with them, bearing a brightness and a grace that seems sometimes almost

icate ferns, maidenhair and lady-bracken, tiny trails of wintergreen and arbutus, filled a great shallow Indian chin

ious fossils; these not gathered by any means in a single summer or in ordinary ramblings, but treasured long, and standing, some of them, for friendly memories-balanced on the one side a like grouping of sh

s, gray and green, framing them in a forest arabesque; and great pi

xon had asked, with a grave, puzzled face, coming in, for

to lie round here; you have to hang everything up!" was Miss Craydocke's answe

old lady knew how to feather her nest better than any of

he midst of a pile of homespun, which she was

iting. Besides, it's dangerous. What if anything should happen in the night? I couldn't get in to help you. Or there might be a fire in our room,-I'm sure I expect nothing else. We boiled eggs in the Etna the other night, and got too much alcohol in the saucer; and then, in the midst of the blaze and excitement, what should Madam Routh do but come knocking at the door! Of course we had to put

eally wan

about your strangling with the asthma-those shea

North Carolina teachi

right idea! And then to whip them with rods as the Giant did his crockery,

e and sew up the seams, you wou

dog, that got cut in two, and clapped together again in a hurry, two legs up and two legs down. Miss Craydocke, why don't

s her gift. I can't do great things. I can only

is! Don't we girls disturb you, Miss Craydocke? I should

o go a story higher. But we're content, and they mus

ell smoke in the night, you'll draw y

those thick and crisp with clustering brown spires, as well as sheets of lichen silvery and pale green; and on the lap-board across her knees lies her work,-a graceful cross in perspective, put on card-board in birch shaded from faint buff to bistre, dashed with the detached lines that seem to have quilted the tree-teguments together. Around the foot of the c

f you please! I've got my arms f

expression, in which curiosity, pluckiness, and a foretaste of amusement mingled so as to drive out annoyance, pushed back her b

hands, or across her arms, rather, she held some huge, uncouth thing, that was not to the last degree dainty-smelling, either; something conglomerated rudely upon a great crooked log or branch, which, glanced at closer, proved to be a fragment of

I suppose. Where will you have it? I'm going to nail it up for you myself. Won't it make a nice contrast to the humming-bird's? Over the bed, shall I? But then, if it should drop down on your nose, you know! I think the corner over

just rest nicely across those evergreen boughs

xon says this in a sudden interjectional way, as if it wer

istaken.

ectional, she had got it into place, thrusting one end up the throat of the chimney, and lodging the crotch that held the nest upon the stems of fresh pine tha

!" repeated Sin, shaking

of course," repl

ightn't be much but scientific. But now-if you don't fo

s by and by I shall put it in a rough box and send it to a

fall that day, trying to make it into a melon; but I had the most extraordinary time endeavoring to pay you a visit. Down South it was, and there you were, organizing and executing, after all, on the most tremendous scale, some kind of freedmen's institution. You were explaining to me and showing me all sorts of things, in such enormous bulk and extent and number! First I was to see your stables, where the cows were kept. A trillion of cows!-that was what you told me. And on the way we went down among such wood-piles!-whole forests cut up into kindlings and built into solid walls that reached up till the sky looked like a thread of blue sewing-silk between. And presently we came to a kind of opening and turned off to see the laundry (Mrs. Lisphin had just brought home my things at bedtime); and there was a place to do the world's washing in, or

ke that," said Miss Craydocke, laughing till she had to

st touching tone and expression of regretful concern. "I didn't mean to

or advise me what to do. It's an awful thing when the fashion alters, just as you've got used to the last one. You can't go back, and you don't dare to go forward

e worst yet," said Miss

worst? Will it come all at on

t worse; and for a while that'll be your thorn in the flesh. And then you'll begin to wonder why the color isn't so bright as it used to be, but looks dingy, all you can do to it; and again, after a while, some day, in a strong light, you'll see th

r own, perhaps,-and not so very far in the past, either, but that a like space in her own future could picture itself to her mind; and something, quite differen

got it all then. You'll know there's never a fifty or a

picked-up dinner argues a fresh one some time. You can't have cold roast mutton un