“I wish,” said the new-fashioned girl, “I was dead.” “You are always wishing something impossible, Evelyn,” answered the old-fashioned girl. “The moment you are dead you will be wishing you were alive.” Paradox of a kind less mordant and less moribund is contained in the following, which I set down as the favourite exclamation of an old-fashioned girl born blind— “Ah, I see it all now!” Sometimes the sorrows of the old-fashioned girl are of a kind calculated to rouse the amusement of those who are of a newer fashion. This is surely the case in the matter of one Ada, who writes— “I have contracted the miserable habit of writing short words backwards, putting ‘dab’ for ‘bad,’ and much more dreadful things than that. I feel that in writing my own name I write it backwards, and that it is only by happy accident that it reads all right. This comes from a game which we have been playing, and which consists of naming words that make sense spelt backwards. The boys like it (this will shock you), because of the word _mad_.” Useless were it to tell this Ada that the word which “mad” spells backwards is one in which “the boys” may fairly take delight, meaning merely, as it does, “a bank to confine water.” The stricken Ada knows boys better. [Illustration: ANOTHER INNOCENT] (_To be continued._) IN THE TWILIGHT SIDE BY SIDE. BY RUTH LAMB. PART XI. THE LITTLE ONES OF THE FAMILY AND THE GLORY OF MOTHERHOOD. “A joyful mother of children.”—Psa. cxiii. 9. * * * * * I called the subject of our two last talks all-important, because I could hardly imagine one possessing wider interest for you. But when I introduced it, I alluded to you, my dear girl friends, not only as the wives, but as the mothers of the future. Marriage and motherhood are alike sacred subjects—the latter certainly not less so than the former. Before the day arrives when the sweet but solemn responsibility of motherhood comes to the young wife, girls who are members of large families have mostly shared in the toil, anxiety, and, let us hope, also in the joy and brightness that the little ones bring into the world with them. It makes me glad as I call to mind many beautiful pictures of sisters who have been second only to the real mother in their loving care of, and tender sympathy with, the younger members of the family. Many a delicate ailing mother has been aided on the path to renewed health by the thought that the children, about whom she would otherwise be painfully anxious, are being lovingly watched over by an elder sister. As she has lain, so willing yet so unable to fulfil her maternal duties, her heart has been full of joy, and her thoughts have gone up in praise to God for the gift of the precious daughter who is cheerfully carrying the weight under which she, unaided, must have sunk.