I own that I am not sanguine in regard to the popularity of my proposed reform, especially in fashionable quarters. Young men who in the language of the day are called "fast," will pronounce this way of giving a party decidedly "slow." Mrs. Fitzshoddy sees that this mode of procedure will materially lessen her chances to display her newly acquired splendors, and thus totally extinguish her aristocratic neighbor over the way, who failed to return her call five years ago. Fitzshoddy himself has serious misgivings. He looks up at the social heights he would fain ascend, and shakes his head despondingly. "That is not the way them fellows does things, and you won't get among them unless you do as they do. They have a crowd, and a big fiddle, and a dance, and a long table with a wheelbarrow load of silver and things on it, and lots of wine, and all that. You can't invite them to a hum-drum tea-drinking that winds up with psalm-singing and prayer. They would think it was somebody's funeral." Miss Arabella, too, who has of late given her whole mind to the devising of gear for the outside of her head--a cunning piece of strategy to divert attention from the state of things within--dreads so much conversation. "People get to talking of things that you never heard of, you know, and books that you never read, and it is so embarrassing, you know." And then she absolutely trembles when she thinks of "Pa's" bad grammar, and his habit of shaking the windows with gigantic laughter at his own jokes. Many, too, will admit the evils of present social customs, but be afraid to lead in innovations. Some will feel that to refuse to give a grand party, after having attended a number among their acquaintances, will look very much like repudiation. Still, I doubt not that the intelligent and the conscientious will agree that what I have proposed is, as it has been already styled, "the more excellent way." I know that it will be hard to make the giddy believe that there is much enjoyment to be found in these quiet ways. They want a crowd, and noise, and commotion. And in this they judge amiss. This crazy rush after excitement defeats itself. As simple food and regular habits best promote health, so simple pleasures best promote genuine happiness. The joys of wine are not to be compared with the calm peace and self-mastery which belong to the temperate. The whirl of the dizzy dance, the wild excitement of the race-course, the sensational tricks of the theater, the whole circle of vices and fashionable follies are poor in their results, compared with the better pleasures which arise from our nobler nature. They who would enjoy life wisely and well, must not heed every voice which cries "Lo, here," or "Lo, there," but remember that "the kingdom is within." [Illustration: decorative] [Illustration: decorative] CHAPTER X. APPEAL TO THE YOUNG MEMBERS OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.