"I wonder, Gabrielle, if your favorite chemistry goes back so far into elementary principles, as to tell you from what black salts are made? School-books seldom, I think, trouble themselves with the origin of things, so I will tell you that after the great logs were burnt that father had felled in clearing, the ashes were collected and leeched, and the lye boiled down in immense cauldrons till it became granulated like sugar. It then formed what was called 'black salts,' and these salts are the basis of potash, soda, etc. The salts could always find a ready market, and with them we paid our taxes, and bought what necessaries we could not raise ourselves." [1] Page 62. CHAPTER XVI. A Birthday--A Surprise--The Day celebrated by a Dinner--An Awkward Mistake--A Queen of Fashion--A Drive to Tarrytown--A Poem to Ida. _July 16_. An air of mystery has pervaded the house for the past week. My offers to take Ida's letters to the post, or to go and fetch home the mail, have been met with a hasty negative, and Minna despatched forthwith to attend to them; and whenever I might enter Ida's room, it would appear to be at a most inopportune moment, for the earnest conversation that had been going on between herself and Gabrielle would instantly stop, and their countenances assume a most transparent expression of indifference. Long whispered conversations with mamma were continually taking place, and Ida seemed to be more frequently called to the kitchen by Lina than I had ever before known her to be, that autocrat being ordinarily by no means tolerant of her presence there. Finally, Ida was summoned to New York upon important business--to meet her lawyer, I supposed, but wondered why she did not simply authorize papa to represent herself, as well as Gabrielle, whose guardian he is, and thus spare herself a tedious day in the city in such sultry weather. Yesterday was my birthday, and to-day is Marguerite's. As the fetes occur in midsummer, we are usually--if in America--upon the Catskill Mountains, or some equally inaccessible place, so that a celebration is not practicable; indeed, our birthdays have not been celebrated since 1869, when some friends in Paris took us all to St. Germain, where we passed a most delightful week at the Pavilion Henri Quatre (a hotel built upon the spot where Louis XIV. was born), and daily drove and picniced in the grand old forest for which St. Germain is noted. The events of yesterday were therefore most unexpected and agreeable.