great many things like this, by the way, and convinces herself, at all events, even if others fail to quite catch her meaning. She is a masterful little woman, and among her own relations and immediate friends she is a perfect autocrat. Her constant cheeriness commands everything, and preserves a family unity, for in every emergency, in any dispute, in any trouble, Mrs. Merrysmile is the centre towards which they all make, from which radiates all the harmony. How many a family quarrel has been averted by her happily apposite wit, how many a cloud has she laughed away with the sunshine of her cheerful little heart! For though she pretends that humour rather than affection is the key-note of her life, that she would sacrifice any tender sentiment for the sake of a joke, Mrs. Merrysmile is brimming over with love of kith and kind, and is peculiarly sensitive to that touch of nature which makes the whole world kin. Her never-failing cheeriness enables her to find some subject of interest everywhere, and the most commonplace stranger has some point that will appeal to her. Her universal sympathy is, in fact, quite remarkable. She can talk with equal interest to the washerwoman with seventeen children, a drunken husband and the rheumatics, and to the lady-novelist with a few published books and an inordinate idea of their merits and her own fame. She will enter into discussion upon any subject of interest to the person with whom she may chance to be conversing, irrespective of possibly her complete ignorance of it, yet somehow she will leave an impression that she is quite conversant with the matter. Her cheery manner and happy knack of saying the right thing at the right moment would, I believe, carry her triumphantly through a debate at the Royal Society, while I am convinced that if she had a seat in Parliament, the members below the gangway would accept her as their leader. They would not elect her; she would simply assume the position as a matter of course, and there would be an end of the matter, of course. Some women are born to lead as some men are, and whatever the circumstances of their lives, they will lead those around them. Mrs. Merrysmile is decidedly one of these women, but she leads by her perpetual, irrepressible cheeriness. There is no gainsaying it, it carries you along like a flood.