tity of dresses, underclothes with lace and tucks, ribbons, fancy
hair ornaments, lace boleros, handkerchiefs. The bottom of her trunk was
full of letters from her beau. The mail was always the source of great
excitement for her, and having noticed that she seemed especially
hilarious over a letter received that night, I made this the pretext for
a confidence.

"You got a letter to-night, didn't you?" I asked innocently. "Was it
the one you wanted?"

"My, yes," she answered, tossing up a heap of missives from the depths
of her trunk. "It was from the same one that wrote me these. I've been
going with him three years. I met him up in the grape country where I
went to pick grapes. They give you your board and you can make
twenty-seven or thirty dollars in a fall. He made up his mind as soon as
he saw me that I was about right. Now he wants me to marry him. That's
what his letter said to-night. He is making three dollars a day and he
owns a farm and a horse and wagon. He bought his sister a $300 piano
this fall."

"Well, of course," I said eagerly, "you will accept him?"

She looked half shy, half pleased, half surprised.

"No, my! no," she answered, shaking her head. "I don't want to be
married."

"But why not? Don't you think you are foolish? It's a good chance and
you have already been 'going with him' three years."

"Yes, I know that, but I ain't ready to marry him yet. Twenty-five is
time enough. I'm only twenty-three. I can have a good time just as I am.
He didn't want me to come away and neither did my parents. I thought it
would 'most kill my father. He looked like he'd been sick the day I
left, but he let me come 'cause he knew I'd never be satisfied until I
got my independence."

What part did the love of humanity play in this young egoist's heart?
She was living, as she had so well explained it, "not to save, but to
give herself pleasure"; not to spare others, but to exercise her will in
spite of them. Tenderness, reverence, gratitude, protection are the
feelings which one generation awakens for another. Among the thousand
contemporaries at Perry, from the sameness of their ambitions, there was
inevitable rivalry and selfishness. The closer the age and capacity the
keener the struggle.

[Illustration: AFTER SATURDAY NIGHT'S SHOPPING]

There are seven churches in Perry of seven different denominations. In
this small town of 3,000 inhabitants there are seven different forms of
worship. The church play