of any such thing as this.
Besides it might have been born a girl onbeknown to her.

But I know that she never washed them children with anything but Casteel
soap, and she talked sights and sights about Spain and things.

So I hearn from Uncle Jered Smith, who visited them while he wuz up on a
tower through Maine, a-sellin' balsam of pine for the lungs.

Wall, Isabelle had a sort of a runnin' down, so Krit said. He begged us
to call him that--said that all his mates at school called him so. He
had been educated quite high. Had been to deestrick school sights, and
then to a 'Cademy and College. He had kinder worked his way up, so I
found out, and so had Isabelle.

She had graduated from a Young Woman's College, taught school to earn
her money, and then went to school as long as that would last, and then
would set out and teach agin, and then go agin and then taught, and then
went.

She wuz younger than Christopher, but he owned up to me that it wuz her
example that had rousted him up to exert himself.

She wuz awful ambitious, Isabelle wuz. She wuz smart as she could be,
and had a feelin' that she wanted to be sunthin' in the World.

But then the old folks wuz took down sick and helpless, and one of the
children had to stay to home. And Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into
the World.

She sold her jewels of Ambition and Happiness, and gin him the avails of
them.

She staid to home with the old folks--kinder peevish and fretful, Krit
said they wuz, too--and let him go a-sailin' out on the broad ocean of
life; she had trimmed her own sails in such hope, but had to curb 'em in
now and lower the topmast.

You have to reef your sails considerable when you are a-sailin' round in
a small bedroom between two beds of sickness (asthma and inflammatory
rheumatiz). You have to haul 'em in, and take down the flyin' pennen of
Hope and Asperation, and mount up the lamp of Duty and Meekness for a
figger-head, instead of the glowin' face of Proud Endeavor.

[Illustration: Isabelle staid, and sent Krit out into the
World.]

But them lamps give a dretful meller, soft light, when they are well
mounted up, and firm sot.

The light on 'em hain't to be compared to any other light on sea or on
shore. It wrops 'em round so serene and glowin' that walks in it. It
rests on their mild forwards in a sort of a halo that shines off on the
hard things of this life and makes 'em endurable, takes the edge kinder
off of the hardest, kee