Radiant delight overspread Miranda's countenance. "I hope they'll just let him go," she said. "He's welcome to what money he's got of mine,--more'n welcome." And homeward she went with a light step. "Women are queer," mused Eben, as he returned to his fish-cleaning. "She's lost her beau and her money, and she's tickled to death." "I declare, you look just as fresh and young and happy as you did fifteen years ago!" said the widow, with a touch of envy, as they sat down at the cheerful breakfast-table. Miranda touched Mrs. Bemis's arm as she came out of the meeting-house the next Sunday, Ephraim's boys, preternaturally smooth of hair and shining of face, beside her. "If it ain't perfane to say it. Mis' Bemis, I feel as if I'd got through the eye of that needle clear into the kingdom of heaven." The poor-mistress commented upon the saying in the midst of her numerous family that night: "She's got that selfish, tempery woman saddled onto her for life, and she'll work her fingers to the bone for them boys, that ain't anything to her, and won't be apt to amount to much,--for there never was one of them Spencers that did,--and she calls that the kingdom of heaven!" "It's jest as I always told you," remarked Cap'n 'Kiah placidly. "It's all owin' to the p'int of view." SOPHIE SWETT. * * * * * THE SECOND RANK. A ZOOLOGICAL STUDY. It is a suggestive sign of our naturalistic times that so many first-class towns in Europe and America contemplate the establishment of Zoological Gardens. In the United States alone five cities have successfully executed that project. Travelling menageries have taken the place of the mediæval pageants. Natural histories begin to supersede the ghost-stories of our fathers. The scientific literature of four different nations has monographs on almost every known species of beasts and birds. With such data of information it seems rather strange that the problem of precedence in the scale of animal intelligence should still be a mooted question. The primacy of the animal kingdom remains, of course, undisputed; but the dog, the elephant, the horse, the beaver,--nay, the parrot, the bee, and the ant,--have found learned and uncompromising advocates of their claims to the honors of the second rank.