humiliating to think that the leading spirit of their Community should occupy her mind with the relations between Prussia and Austria, when such questions as affected the future of humanity and of Perfection City were what filled their souls. She even evinced a keen interest in the career and personality of the Prussian minister, Bismarck, and that, too, when Brother Wright was willing to give her the light of his thoughts upon all really important questions. It was painful to the feeling of the Pioneers, who were all in all to themselves and wished to be so to others, but they had to put up with it, since Madame was their leader and, moreover, the only one who had a purse with some money in it. Ezra was the only member of the Community who sided with Madame in her taste for reading the new books and the latest periodicals. He and she had that taste, with many others, in common, and it drew them together in an especial degree. On his last trip East during the winter, when he had been so unexpectedly delayed, as they now knew, by meeting with his fate in the shape of Olive, one of his commissions had been to bring back a box of books, which were now arranged in neat shelves in Madame’s private sitting-room. And yet notwithstanding all these books, a hundred or more, the steady stream of papers, periodicals, and magazines continued as before, and had to be fetched regularly from Union Mills. The brethren took it in turns to go to the town, which was some ten miles distant, and they always combined some useful business with the fetching of the letters. Brother Wright was a frequent messenger, for he liked going better than Ezra did, while of course Brother Dummy was precluded by his affliction from going, and Brother Carpenter was hopelessly unable to drive horses. Some of the women generally contrived to find an excuse for going to Union Mills, for women like to get away from the petty cares of house and home, a peculiarity from which the sisters of Perfection City were by no means exempt. In particular Mrs. Ruby, invariably called Aunt Ruby, loved to go. She thus got a chance of seeing new faces and talking with new people. She would not for worlds have confessed that she was tired of the restricted society of Perfection City, but she knew so well what each had to say, that it was refreshing to go out sometimes into the world and meet people whose ideas could not always be guessed beforehand.