Aunt Dilly would turn in her grave if she thought her rule was to have lard used instead of butter. I made some experiments and found it was distinctly best to stick close to the old original text. You can buy cheap pies anywhere and they taste cheap. These melt in your mouth. And you ought to know that two other women in the neighborhood have specialties, too, and I taught them, for my mother used to make a delicious chicken jelly for sick people and one woman does that and has a big market for it at the Woman's Exchange, and another makes cornbeef hash for three restaurants and has all she can do. The gist of it is _good cooking can always be made to pay_. Keep to the best form you can find, never vary, and a living, and often much more, is certain. When women learn that, perhaps more of them will turn in this direction. Here is the home paid for, trees growing and yielding, children growing too, and Tom almost ready for college, and chicken pie has done it, and will keep on doing it, perhaps as long as I live. At any rate I should never stop doing something as perfectly as I could for that is half the fun of living. Don't you think so? We keep the evenings for as much of a good time as possible. I keep a little of my old music and play accompaniments, for Tom has a fine baritone voice and we all sing, and Edith and her violin take the kinks out of any day's work. We have a fair little library and do not mean to fall behind or forget what quiet progress means. It has been a happy life, thank God! How could it help being so, with such children and a certain sure thing to do?" Yes, how could it help being thus with such a spirit at work to bring it about? That was the thought as I looked at the mother, and wished that all dolorous and uncertain women might have the same chance. Joining the Sunshine Circle or the Harmony Club might be the first essential. After that things would take care of themselves. In August Cora A. Matson Dolson For me a basket and a book Where cooling hemlocks grow; And, in the deep of wooded nooks, The spikes of cardinal glow. A book to bring but not to read-- Enough to know it near, To turn a leaf I do not need, The song is with me here. A bird-note comes adown the wood, It seems to stillness wed; A tap, then gleam of scarlet hood High in the tree o'erhead. The Indian-pipe is waxen stemmed; The squirrels near me play; While on this bank by mosses gemmed I dream the hours away. Old Age By Kate Gannett Wells