all turned aside, and started away in surprise, as this little red-haired girl went on learning and learning and learning. At nine years old she was studying Paley’s “Moral Philosophy,” with girls of sixteen and eighteen. She could not have been older when she heard a class reciting an Italian lesson, and fell in love with the melodious language. She listened, and listened again; then got a grammar and studied secretly, and one day handed to the astonished Italian teacher a letter correctly written in Italian, begging that she might join the class. When I was speaking of the good aunt who was a second mother to the Ward children, I meant to say a word of the stern but devoted father who was the principal figure in Julia’s early life. She says of him: “He was a majestic person, of somewhat severe aspect and reserved manners, but with a vein of true geniality and a great benevolence of heart.” And she adds: “His great gravity, and the absence of a mother, naturally subdued the tone of the whole household; and though a greatly cherished set of children, we were not a very merry one.” Still, with all his gravity, Grandfather Ward had his gleams of fun occasionally. It is told that Julia had a habit of dropping off her slippers while at table. One day her father felt a wandering shell of kid, with no foot to keep it steady. He put his own foot on it and moved it under his chair, then said in his deep, grave voice, “My daughter, will you bring me my seals, which I have left on the table in my room?” And poor Julia, after a vain and frantic hunting with both feet, was forced to go, crimson-cheeked, white-stockinged and slipperless, on the required errand. She would never have dreamed of asking for the shoe. She was the eldest daughter, the companion and joy of this sternly loving father. She always sat next him at table, and sometimes he would take her right hand in his left, and hold it for many minutes together, continuing to eat his dinner with his right hand; while she would rather go dinnerless than ask him to release her own fingers. Grandfather Ward! It is a relief to confess our faults; and it may be my duty to say that as soon as I could reach it on tiptoe, it was my joy to pull the nose of his marble bust, which stood in the great dining-room at Green Peace. It was a fine, smooth, long nose, most pleasant to pull; I fear I soiled it sometimes with my little grimy fingers. I trust children never do such naughty things nowadays.