I have been very frank, as you see, about Hurville, because, although many of our business-men, in a sort of small beer of local patriotism, insist upon taking up the utterly untenable position that Hurville is the only "live town" in the country outside of New York and Chicago, I am unable to recognize this astonishing vitality myself, and I always say that if Hurville is "live," I should like to know what something dead looks like, acts like, and especially buys and sells like. The commerce of the place has been completely stagnant for several years, and in Hurville, if ever anywhere, is it a mystery to one half the world how the other half lives. I believe both halves would now be one complete and thoroughly defunct whole were it not that the vital spark is kept alive in both sections by Mrs. Marcellus. Her position in a community so provincial, and in many respects so narrow-minded, as that of our little place, has always been an exceedingly singular one; yet she was lifted to the throne of leadership of our choicest circle on her arrival, and has wielded the sceptre uninterruptedly ever since, without the slightest breath of disaffection having arisen among her courtiers. When she first came to Hurville, fifteen years ago, she was a young widow of thirty, very handsome, very travelled, very cultured, very stylish and passably rich. She is all this yet, and much more that is good and lovable as well. On the left-hand side of the account there is nothing to make a blur except that she is now a motherly lady of forty-five, instead of being, as she was when she first came, just on the last step of the stairs where girlhood shuts the door in a woman's face finally--at thirty.