As the Minister's Wife I was asked everywhere. In all well-bred communities the preacher's wife is given the free moral agent's opportunity to draw her own line between the world and the church. If she refuses a series of invitations to teas and clubs and receptions, it is understood that she is not of the world, will have none of it, and she is left to pursue her pious way to just the church services and missionary meetings. But I refused to draw the spiritual line between tea parties and the bible-class study evening. I accepted every invitation with alacrity. There was nothing radically wrong, I believe, with my heavenly mind, it simply extended further down and around about than that of some others in my position. One circumstance only interfered with my pleasures. This was the curious sag and limpness, and color and style of my clothes. It is no mystery to me why dress fashions for women connected with the itinerancy tend to mourning shades. When you put the world out of your life, you put the sweet vanity of color out. You eschew red and pink and tender sky-blues and present your bodies living sacrifices in black materials. I do not believe that God requires it. The Maker of the heavens and the earth, of the green boughs and of the myriad-faced flowers must be a lover of colors. But I cannot recall ever having seen a Circuit Rider's Wife in my life whose few garments were not pathetically dashed with this gloom of mourning darkness. So, when we came to Celestial Bells, I say, I had a black sateen waist and a gray cheviot skirt still worthy to be worn to church and prayer meeting services, and a sadder blacker gown that had done service for four years upon funeral occasions and others equally as solemn, like weddings. These were all, except the calicos I wore at home. The result was that I must have looked like some sort of sacrilegious crow at every social function in Celestial Bells during the first few months. But as the Spring advanced, I took my courage in my hands and resolved to have a blue foulard silk. It was frightfully expensive, seventy-five cents a yard, in fact, to say nothing of a white lace yoke and a black panne velvet belt. But no bride ever contemplated her "going away" gown with more satisfaction. I pictured myself in it before I even purchased it attending Sister Z's tea party, _looking like other women_! I do not recommend this as high ambition, but those preachers' wives in the remote places who have worn drab and sorrowfully cut clothes for years will know how I felt. I think there is something pitiful in women just here. No matter how old and consecrated they get, they do in their secret hearts often long to be pretty, to look well dressed and--yes, light-hearted. The latter is so becoming to them.