felt that we had reason
to be thankful that Mrs. Jameson did not beseech us to eat health
food as she did at the picnic, and also that the reading was over for
that day.

Louisa, when we were going home that night, said she supposed that
Mrs. Jameson would try to improve our literary society also; and she
was proved to be right in her supposition at the very next meeting.
Mrs. Jameson came, and she not only read selections from Browning,
but she started us in that mad problem of Shakespeare and Bacon. Most
of the ladies in our society had not an intimate acquaintance with
either, having had, if the truth were told, their minds too fully
occupied with such humble domestic questions of identity as whether
Johnny or Tommy stole the sugar.

However, when we were once fairly started there was no end to our
interest; we all agonized over it, and poor Mrs. Sim White was so
exercised over the probable deception of either Bacon or Shakespeare,
in any case, that she told me privately that she was tempted to leave
the literary society and confine herself to her Bible.

There was actual animosity between some members of our society in
consequence. Mrs. Charles Root and Rebecca Snow did not speak to each
other for weeks because Mrs. Root believed that Shakespeare was
Bacon, and Rebecca believed he was himself. Rebecca even stayed away
from church and the society on that account.

Mrs. Jameson expressed herself as very much edified at our interest,
and said she considered it a proof that our spheres were widening.

Louisa and I agreed that if we could only arrive at a satisfactory
conclusion in the matter we should feel that ours were wider;
and Flora Clark said it did not seem of much use to her, since
Shakespeare and Bacon were both dead and gone, and we were too much
concerned with those plays which were written anyhow, and no question
about it, to bother about anything else. It did not seem to her that
the opinion of our literary society would make much difference to
either of them, and that possibly we had better spend our time in
studying the plays.

At the second meeting of our society which Mrs. Jameson attended she
gave us a lecture, which she had written and delivered before her
Shakespeare club in the city. It was upon the modern drama, and we
thought it must be very instructive, only as few of us ever went to
the theatre, or even knew the name of a modern playwright, it was
almost like a lecture in an unknown tong