“M—I don’t know about that. At times, I am very much discouraged. One woman said she would gladly allow her children to wear two fresh aprons a day, if I would pay for the washing of them. Another said that she had already raised six children without my assistance, and she believed she could worry on without it a bit longer. Still another was so stupid that she couldn’t be made to understand how I, who had never had any children, was able to offer her such valuable suggestions.” “As if it depended on experience,” said the president. “The theory is ever so much more important.” “That was what I said to the woman who— You knew that I had resigned from that same committee, didn’t you?” said the girl with the Roman nose. “Why, no; this is the first I have heard of it. And you were so enthusiastic, too! What on earth has made you change your mind?” “A woman. She—” “Oh! I thought, perhaps, it was a man,” said the brown-eyed blonde. “No. I am not as easily influenced as you are, dear. This woman lived up six flights of the dirtiest stairs I ever saw. I wondered at the time why she didn’t ask the landlord to have an elevator put in; probably she hadn’t thought of it. She lived in two rooms, and you never saw such awful poverty in your life. I thought, as she was so awfully poor, she couldn’t have much feeling, so I told her plainly that she could never expect her children to love and honor her if she did not at once give them each a hot bath, and put up fresh curtains and a pot or two of flowers in the windows. Everybody knows how cheap curtains are nowadays—not the real lace ones, of course, but—” “Tamboured muslin and all that,” said the president. “Was she grateful for your interest in her?” “I fear not. She looked at me, earnestly, and said: ‘You’ve been to one of them, haven’t you? I’ve always wanted to see somebody that had!’” “Was the woman mad?” “I was afraid so, and I began to back out of the door, when she called, ‘Mary Ellen! oh, Mary Ellen! come right in here this minute! Here is a lady who has been to one of them there beauty doctors we was talking about yesterday! She must be awful old, for she’s brought up a lot of children; and come here to teach me how to raise mine; and if that beauty doctor ain’t fixed her up so she looks real young!’” “And did Mary Ellen come?” asked the girl with the dimple in her chin, sympathetically. “I don’t know. I didn’t wait; but I am almost sure I heard several people laughing as I came down-stairs. After this, I shall devote my energies to foreign missions or something like that. If the heathens are not grateful for my efforts in their behalf, they at least express themselves in a tongue I don’t understand; and they are too far away for me to hear them, even if I _could_ understand!”