She strikes me as a sensible girl, and I think you would like her if you knew her. She has helped me to get the right kind of books into the hands of the little Italians and other foreigners I have to teach. Most Sunday-school books are very mushy, I think, and I don't believe it's a healthy moral when the good boy dies young. Miss Stanwood says that sometimes when one of my scholars takes home a book it is read by every member of the family who knows how to read, and they all talk it over. So it's very important to give them books that will help to make good Americans of them. She got her father to buy a lot of copies of lives of Washington and Franklin and Lincoln. They are not specially religious, these books, but what of it? Miss Stanwood says she thinks we must all try first of all to make men of these rough boys, to make them manly, and then they'll be worthy to be Christians. She is thinking not only of the boys themselves, but of the parents too, and of the rest of the family; and she says that a little leaven of patriotism suggested by one of these books may work wonders. But you are quite right in saying that I'm not as lonely as I was a month ago. Of course not, for I'm getting used to the bigness of the place and the noise no longer wears on me. Besides, I've found out that the New-Yorkers are perfectly willing to be friendly. They'll meet you half-way always, not only in the church, but even down-town, too. I ain't afraid of them any more, and I can tell a conductor to let me out at the corner now without wishing to go through the floor of the car. Fact is, I've found out how little importance I am. Up at Auburnvale people knew me; I was old John Forthright's only son; I was an individual. Here in New York I am nobody at all, and everybody is perfectly willing to let me alone. I think I like it better here; and before I get through I'll force these New-Yorkers to know me when they see me in the street--just as they touch each other now and whisper when they pass old Ezra Pierce. Write soon and tell me there's nothing the matter with you. I'm all right and I'd send you my love--but you got it all already. JACK. VIII NEW YORK, Nov. 16, 1894. DEAR MIRIAM,--I asked you to write me soon, and yet you've kept me waiting ten days again. Even now your letter has come I can't seem to get any satisfaction out of it. I have never known you to write so stiffly. Is there anything the matter? Are you worried at home? Is your mother sick or your father? I wish I could get away for a week at Thanksgiving to run up and see you. But we are kept pretty busy at the store. There isn't one of the firm hasn't got his nose down to the grindstone, and that's where they keep ours. That's how they've made their money; it's all good training for me, of course.