To return to our first winter in a city school: The session began on October 5th. We had ceased to be homesick, and were learning to sustain, with seeming good-humor, criticisms of our “countrified ways and old-fashioned talk,” when our mother came to town for her fall shopping. She arrived on the first of November, my father tarrying behind to vote on the fourth. We had a glorious Saturday. It was our very first real shopping expedition, and it has had no equal in our subsequent experiences. There was a lecture on Saturday morning. Mr. Richard Sterling, the brother-in-law of our late tutor, and the head-master of a classical school for boys, lectured to us weekly upon Natural Philosophy. We were out by eleven o’clock, and on emerging from the house, we found our mother awaiting us without. The day was divine, and we had worn our best walking-dresses, in anticipation of the shopping frolic. Three of the girls had commented upon our smart attire, one remarking that we “really looked like folks.” The vocabulary of school-girls usually harmonizes with their deportment. The tall girl I have spoken of as “Miss Blank,” added to her patronizing notice of the country girls, the encouraging assurance that “if we only had bonnets less than a century old, we would be quite presentable.” We held our peace, hugging to our souls the knowledge that we were that day to try on two velvet bonnets—_real_ velvet—the like of which had never graced our heads before. We could afford to smile superior to contempt and to patronage—the lowest device of the mean mind, the favorite tool of the consciously underbred. I forgot heat and bitterness, and misanthropy died a natural death in the milliner’s shop. The new hat was a dream of beauty and becomingness in my unlearned eyes. It was a soft plum-color, and had a tiny marabou feather on the side. I had never worn a feather. Mea’s was dark-blue and of uncut velvet. It, too, was adorned with a white feather. I could have touched the tender blue heavens with one finger when it was decided that we might wear the new bonnets home, and have the old ones sent up instead. “You know I never like to have new clothes worn for the first time to church,” our mother remarked, aside, to us. We walked up-town, meeting my father at the foot of Capitol Street. He was in a prodigious hurry, forging along at a rate that made it difficult for me to overtake him when my mother told me to “run after him, and we would all go home together.” He drew out his watch when I told my errand breathlessly. His eyes were bright with excitement; as he hurried back to offer his arm to his wife, he said: “I must be on Broad Street when the Northern train comes in. We have just time if you don’t mind walking briskly.”