After what has been said it will be seen that no greater mistake can be made than for a mother, while creating immortals, to drudge and scrimp for the sake of being some day well, or better off. While she has thus slaved, sparing herself no restful hours in which to enjoy the beauty of flower or field, in which to contemplate a beautiful face or graceful figure in real life or picture, in which to enjoy music or the creations of genius in literature, she has fixed irrevocably for this world the unsatisfactory status of her children who will so poorly adorn the new house when it is one day built. There is a ministry without us visible and invisible, and angels find it difficult to approach with gifts the mother absorbed by household drudgery. EFFECT OF IMAGINATION. [This, with the account of the New Berlin Prostitute, was communicated to me by my friend, Mrs. E. W. Farnham.] In a remote hamlet in one of the then young Western States, Mrs. F. became acquainted with a family which included nearly a dozen members, and nearly all married, and settled within easy distance of the old homestead. The sexes were pretty equally divided, each and every one of these young men and women being in appearance and character below mediocrity, with one exception. The latter was a young girl about nineteen years old, who was so evidently and remarkably superior both in personal appearance and nature, that it did not seem possible she could belong to the same family. Beside the heavy, coarse faces of her brothers and sisters, hers was angelic in its graceful contour, long-fringed lids and refined, expressive mouth. The very curly hair, which resembled the mother’s only in its curliness, had a golden glint that removed it by several degrees of relationship from the wiry red on one side and faded black on the other, which crowned the broad, low heads of the gruff brothers and two drowsy-looking married sisters who were at this time home on a long visit. This girl, now the successful teacher of the district-school, filled her place in the always untidy, dilapidated household, unconscious of being an anomaly. She had made some effort to brighten the dingy walls, and here and there the uneven floor of the living-room was concealed by pretty rag-mats of her making. Notwithstanding the inferiority of the family as a whole, there was a general friendliness among the members, proceeding from the rough, but unfailing deference shown by the father to the mother. Nelly’s wishes received a sort of grumbling attention, and her opinion was quoted as having weight. Still, owing to the very refined character of her attractions, they were evidently to a great extent overlooked by all but her mother. Mrs. F. was a long while in getting hold of any clue that would explain this phenomenon. No, Nelly was not born in that low dwelling under the shadow of those catalpas, but in a poorer shanty in Northern Tennessee.