From the days when Jim Baldwin had carried home parcels of tea and buckets of butter in his father-in-law’s corner grocery, he had cherished an honourable ambition to have a great big library full of books. In the course of time, through the operations of the shoe-stitching machine, he had been able to gratify this ambition and taste. He had all of those books which Charles Lamb declares “are no books--that is, all the books which no gentleman’s library should be without.” They were all bound sumptuously in calf, and éditions de luxe were as common as flies in a baker’s shop. The four vast walls were lined with these treasures, and from them Baldwin derived an excess of pleasure. This was not by reading them--he had never read a book in his life. Two Chicago newspapers, one from New York, and the Washington morning and evening papers satisfied his cravings for knowledge. But he got from the outside of his books all the pleasure that most people get from the inside. He justly felt that to be seen surrounded by the glorious company of the living who died a thousand years ago, and the conspicuous dead who live to-day, was to give him dignity and poise. Nobody but himself knew that he never read. His days were spent in his library--he always spoke of himself as “among my books”--and shrewd, sharp, and keen as he was and ever must remain, he had actually succeeded in bamboozling himself into the notion that he was a person of “literary tastes.” Mrs. Baldwin was one of the handsomest women in Washington, and considered quite the proudest. Her abundant grey hair, setting off a face of Grecian beauty, gave her a look as of a queen in the days of powder and patches. She had a rarity of speech, a way of looking straight ahead of her, which was regal. But this exterior of pride was really a result of the sincerest bashfulness and reserve. When Nora Hogan, the grocer’s daughter, had married Jim Baldwin, the contractor’s son, Fortune was already smiling on Jim. Then suddenly she opened her apron and deluged him with gold. Mrs. Baldwin was frightened and stunned. She was afraid to say much for fear she might make mistakes--so she gradually came to saying nothing at all. She dreaded to look from side to side for fear she might find some one laughing at her. So she always looked straight ahead of her. By degrees she acquired a degree of coldness, of stiffness, that was perfectly well suited to the mother of Lady Clara Vere de Vere. She was, of course, an unhappy woman, being a misjudged one. Her chief solace lay in the practice of secret acts of charity among the poorest of the poor, not letting her left hand know what her right hand did. The promoters of fashionable charities complained that Mrs. Baldwin was so stately and so unsympathetic that they could not get on with her in charitable work. True it is, that at the meetings for fashionable charities Mrs. Baldwin would be more silent, more queenly than ever, but her heart