"I couldn't help it," I said. "Poor Rhoda! But what about Jim, Aunt Nancy?" "This way, Madam," said the conductor briskly. "Let me have your valise." "Jim?" she whispered excitedly, "he like to went wild, but he was mighty quiet, an' soon's the funeral was over he sold everything he had and went to Californy." "Did he forgive his mother?" I asked, but the conductor took my arm and marched me out, and to this day I am wondering about "Jim" and his mother and "ole man Curtis." If I knew where "Aunt Nancy" lived, I would write to her. MRS. GLADSTONE AND HER GOOD WORKS. BY MARY G. BURNETT. The mistress of Hawarden Castle is something more than the devoted wife of the great statesman who sways the destinies of Great Britain. She has a notable personality of her own, worthy in its energy and sagacity of him with whom her life is linked. While the husband's career has always been interwoven with the highest affairs of state, the wife has shown her genius for administration by the charitable enterprises in which she has taken so active a part. Most things come about naturally as the effect of growth; and it is interesting to go back to the childhood of Mrs. Gladstone to trace the influences which directed her mind to deeds of beneficence. Things have changed since Mrs. Gladstone was a little girl, living with her sister and brothers at Hawarden Castle, nearly eighty years ago. Mrs. Gladstone's father, Sir Stephen Glynne, died young, when his eldest daughter Catherine (Mrs. Gladstone) was scarcely five years old. Tradition remembers him as a very handsome, lively-minded man, and it is said that Catherine Glynne grew up very like her father. One of Mrs. Gladstone's first vivid impressions is of the fright she got by seeing the "mutes," then the fashion at important funerals, standing about the castle while her dead father lay in state. It gave her a life-long horror of elaborate and expensive funerals. Her father was succeeded in the baronetcy and estates by his eldest son, Stephen Richard, then but a little boy of eight. Lady Glynne, a daughter of Lord Brabrooke, was left with the sole charge of the property and the children. She was a beautiful woman of strong character. Fortunately about this time her brother, the Honorable George Neville, came to be rector of Hawarden parish. The castle and rectory were within a quarter hour's walk of each other, and it was a precious boon for Lady Glynne to have her brother's judicious help in the management of the large estates, and in the education of her two boys and her two girls. This was about the year 1813. At that date Hawarden, in common with a village in Cheshire, had the deserved reputation of being the most wicked place in all the country round. Mr. Neville, with Lady Glynne's consent, closed the worst of the public houses, and inaugurated a system of education for the parish, setting up schools in Hawarden village and in the districts round. MRS. GLADSTONE'S EARLY TRAINING.