“Every day I obliged myself to explain certain problems in geometry. This would favor continuity of thought, I decided. Then I began to recall continually the ideas that just flitted into my mind and out again. They would return, and I would dwell a little more on them--see other sides to them; the connection in which they stood to some other idea. Then, after a little I felt tired, and let them go, but still held my mind in readiness for their return. It really both amused and astonished me to see them come trooping back. Why, thought is a series of pictures! I exclaimed. It is all illustration. The ‘fetching myself up standing’ in this way was rather hard work the first two months, but it became easier, and I grew to enjoy my own improvement wonderfully. Of course there were interruptions and discouragements, but I held on bravely, and I am sure successfully, for Walter, at three years old, would fix his mind on a person or a picture in a book, and keep his attention on it to the amusement of all observers; and now if you tell him to make his slate full of figures, he pegs away at it till there is not room for one more.” MUSICAL ABILITY. During the winter which followed the summer of their union the X.’s became members of a coterie, with which dancing was held in high esteem. Mrs. X. was _enciente_, but showed her condition scarcely at all, and so danced, and afterward played for the dancers at the hebdomadal reunions, up to within a month of her confinement. She had left school with fair musical powers fairly cultivated, and with a voice sweet, but not powerful. The lover who had praised her singing, when her husband, spoke in thoughtless, disparaging strain of its quality. This so wounded and discouraged her that no inducement could make her open her lips again. But, as I have said, she continued to play on the piano-forte, more or less on each occasion, “dance music” already at her fingers’ ends, and short, easy, gay compositions with which she was familiar before leaving school, and which needed no notes as reminders. At home she read and studied no new music, or music of a higher character. This was partly because her musical taste was uncultivated, and partly because the new draft on her energy was attended by depression, and she felt justified in yielding to her feelings, and dropping all mental and bodily effort. “I will be more studious, more orderly and hospitable after baby is born. But now I shall drop everything--let things slide.”