"Shortly afterward I received notice to leave the High School. I did not mind--I always hated teaching, and I found that I had the power of writing; an article that I could flash off in a few hours would keep me for a week, and I could create my own paradise for half a crown--now, Peg, you are crying again. But of late life was not so bad. I enjoyed writing, and shall always be thankful I can read Greek; besides, I was not always drunk; the craving only takes me occasionally, and at its worst alcohol is a kinder master than love. I shall be well enough to go out in a few days; bring me some pens and paper, and my editor will advance me some money. I am going to write an article on workhouse infirmaries that will startle the public. What do you know of workhouses? You are only a Guardian; 'tis we musicians (or rather inmates) who know." The article never got written. The next day I found Eunice very ill; she was unconscious and delirious till her death, reeling off sonorous hexameters from Homer and Virgil and stately passages from the Greek tragedians. We spared her a pauper funeral, and a few old school and college friends gathered round the grave. A white-haired professor of world fame was there also, and he shook hands with us as we parted at the cemetery gates. "Poor Eunice!" he said, his aged face working painfully. "One of the best Greek scholars of the day, and the daughter of my oldest friend. Both of them geniuses, and both of them with the same taint in the blood; but I feel I ought not to have let her come to this." I think we all felt the same as we walked sadly home. DETAINED BY MARITAL AUTHORITY (By the law of England the mothers of illegitimate children are often in a better position than their married sisters.) An unusual sense of expectancy pervaded the young women's ward; Mrs. Cleaver had gone down "to appear before the Committee," and though the ways of committees are slow, and pauper-time worthless, it was felt that her ordeal was being unduly protracted. "She's having a dose, she is," said a young woman walking up and down, futilely patting the back of a shrieking infant. "I 'ate appearing afore them committees; last time I was down I called the lady 'Sir' and the gentleman 'Mum,' and my 'eart went pitter-patter in my breast so that you might have knocked me down with a feather. 'Ere she is--well, my dear, and you do look bad----" "Them committees allus turn me dead sick, and, being a stout woman, my boots feel too tight for me, and I goes into a perspiration, and the great drops go rolling off my forehead. Well, 'e's kept 'is word, and got the law and right of England behind 'im." What reporters call a "sensation" made itself felt through the ward; the inmates gathered closer round Mrs. Cleaver, and screaming infants were rocked and patted and soothed with much vigour and little result.