These little ones, without means and without the sympathy of the multitudes, who, in their desperation in the struggle for bread, forgot or did not see them, were sent to this aunt. That poor old woman had griefs enough of her own. Her life was well nigh worked out. She had neither nerves nor strength. Her limbs were stiff and rheumatic. Her eyes were dim and her aged back was bent. In her mean little cottage by the roadside at Annisquan she had all she could do to nurse the fading embers of her life’s fires, and she was now expected to support these two little infants, one three and one five years of age. She was cross to them, but she did not mean to be. She was very impatient and she did not know it. She did not take them into her arms as a mother would, but that never occurred to her. And yet she loved them, but the power of expressing love had long been crushed out by poverty. So one day these two ragged, half-fed little boys, with their tear-bestained cheeks and great eyes, made more expressive by being set in the pale faces pinched by want, started out from the old aunt’s house in search of a place their mother used to tell them about which was called Heaven, where she said their papa was. The children were afterward found nearly starved to death lying near the roadside seven miles from home by some charitably disposed persons, who fed them and subsequently caused them to be placed in an orphan asylum, where they were kept and given a meagre education suitable to their lowly financial condition. When they were large and strong enough they were sent to the West and placed in the charge of farmers, but were widely separated. The author traced the development of each. Both were naturally possessed of powerful minds. One became a money maker, the other the champion of a new system for the development of his race. One was a great banker and amassed millions. The other was a great co-operator and occupied a high station in the Co-operative Commonwealth. She carried her story into the future that she might picture conditions which had not yet obtained. In those days it was a favorite method of illustrating economic principles, and had been made quite fashionable by Bellamy’s famous work called “Looking Backward.” Miss Woodberry’s novel was not so remarkable for its plot as for the vivid contrast which it presented between the competitive and co-operative system, and so powerfully did her pen draw the picture that while the brother who gave his life to the one, though not worse than most of its supporters, seemed possessed of a demon of greed; the brother who gave his life to the other appeared to be no more nor less than a man. This novel seemed to me then, as it does now, both instructive and artistic and equal to any of those which my wife has written since. “What shall we do now?” asked Miss Woodberry. “You have obtained a favorable criticism and the Association will publish the novel. What advantage will it give me or you to do so?”