the clouds had parted,
I think my companions caught some inspirations of the 'Poetry of the
Rail-way.'"

[Illustration: CHEAT RIVERS NARROWS.]

At Grafton we have choice of two routes: one, to Wheeling, leads us by
the beautiful scenery of the Tygart, where the Valley River Falls are
laughing and glistening all day and all night, and by the stupendous
Bollman bridge at Bellaire, almost two miles long, to Wheeling. But we
continue on a straight course to Cincinnati, having promised ourselves
to see the contrast between the City of Monuments and the Metropolis
of Pork. Grafton offers us the accommodations of another of the
company's hotels, where, as at Cumberland, we are daintily and
tenderly fed. At Parkersburg we find another superb bridge, over a
mile in length; at Athens an imposing insane asylum, to take care of
us if all these engineering wonders have deprived us of our senses;
and finally in Cincinnati, just a day after our departure from
Baltimore, the gleam of the Ohio River and the fulfillment of our
intention.

AN EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF A STRONG-MINDED WOMAN.

_Extracts from a Journal_.

November 1, 18----. It is just three years to-day since I began to
keep this journal. I am so glad now that I persisted in doing so,
in spite of the temptations that have often assailed me to throw it
aside. How else could I realize, bring home to myself, these past
three years, strong and vivid as my remembrance of them is? No effort
of mere recollection could have preserved for me as this book has done
a record of my struggles and failures, and of my victories. Yes, I
write the word proudly, _victories_, for I have been beyond my hopes
successful. How well I remember my dear mother's distress at my queer
notions, as she called them--her entreaties, her tender illogical
protests against my making myself "conspicuous"! Dear mother! I can
see now that it was very natural she should have disliked and dreaded
my becoming a "strong-minded woman," for anything narrower than her
ideas of a woman's education and sphere one cannot imagine. She was an
excellent specimen of the old-fashioned mother and wife, and I believe
sincerely thought her whole duty in life and the intention of her
creation was "to suckle fools and chronicle small beer."

Let me see: yes, here it is at the very beginning--November 1, 18----.
How faded the ink looks! Let me read it: "To-day I told mother I meant
to attend a course of medical lectu