after the thousand wants of a clergyman’s house, keeping the big brothers in order for the Universities they are plodding through; obeying her papa and mamma, who tell her she is too “independent and ambitious,” writing at odd moments as she can pick them, reading Carlyle, Dickens, Goethe, Schiller, as she can steal the minutes, pining that she must be held in just such bondage of body and soul, praying for the day when she may come and live with me a little more, and beginning a long, strong, logical letter once in a while with “To the Devil with the housework! Why must I fritter away all the best years of my own life and starve my brain to cram my brothers who already have been taught twenty times more than they can apply?” And she is right. But my sheet will be full and I shall have said nothing at all. I have just written your “Marm” and I think, perhaps, that will find its way to you, and you must just have had a surfeit through Annie. I am glad she went for a vacation. I wonder what they do at Falmouth. When I am home, can’t we go? I am not at all certain where I shall pass the winter; it may be I shall think I must work in France. I cannot tell how they will present themselves by winter, or I may think it well to quarter myself here in Paris and wait; and I have half a mind to go to Spain. This is perhaps the most sensible use I could make of the time. I must wait a little the turning of events. I can tell better after a month more in the east of France. I am glad you have had a visit from Georgie. It was nice of her to send me a line. Is not Alice with you now? Has she turned to ashes?--very possible--human nature can as well as wood or coal. Write me when you have time and don’t let Ber abuse you. Yours CLARA To Ber-- I am first-rate, how are you? CLARA For particulars see within. After the terror and bloodshed of the Paris Commune, Miss Barton spent some time in northern France, laboring as she had labored in Paris and in Lyons; at Belfort, where she finished her work on October 27, and went for a little time of rest to Carlsruhe, where she was the guest of the Reverend Mr. Zimmermann, whose daughter had labored with her at Strassburg. Antoinette Margot was there also, glad to turn from scenes of desolation to her work of painting. The middle of December she went forth again in bitter cold weather, accompanied by Antoinette Margot, distributing relief to the poor at Mülhausen, Belfort, and Montbéliard. She spent Christmas at Strassburg, where she served a great Christmas dinner to some five hundred of her old acquaintances, and then returned to Carlsruhe.