you sorely at the meeting of the Aubrey Home house-committee
yesterday. Harriet Maline and Mrs. Percy Brown had a battle royal
over the laying of the new water-pipes, and over _my_ prostrate body,
which still aches from the contest. I wish Harriet would resign. She
is the only creature I have ever known, except the Bate's parrot and
my present cook, who is perpetually out of temper. If she were not
my husband's stepmother's niece, I am sure I could stand up to her
better.

Cordially yours,
ALICE LEIGH SHEPHERD.

_Mrs. Wilfred Ward Hamilton to Miss Violet Wray_

DEAR VIOLET,--

You know Margaret Irington better than I do. Do you think she would
like to have a course of Dante in her school this winter? A very clever
and charming woman, a Miss Alexandrina Ramsay, has four lectures on
the poet which she is anxious to give before schools, or clubs, or--if
she can--in private houses. I have promised Mrs. Shepherd to do
anything in my power to help her. It occurred to me that the
Contemporary Club might like to have one of the lectures, and you
are on the committee. That would be the making of Miss Ramsay, if
only she could be heard in that huge Clover Room. I understand she
has a pleasant cultivated voice, but is not accustomed to public
speaking. There must be plenty of smaller clubs at Bryn Mawr, or
Haverford, or Chestnut Hill, for which she would be just the thing.
Her grandfather wrote a history of England, and I have a vague
impression that I studied it at school. I should write to the Drexel
Institute, but don't know anybody connected with it. Do you? It would
be a real kindness to give Miss Ramsay a start, and I know you do
not begrudge trouble in a good cause. You did such wonders for
Fraulein Breitenbach last winter.

Love to your mother,
Affectionately yours,
HANNAH GALE HAMILTON.

_Miss Violet Wray to Mrs. J. Lockwood Smith_

DEAR ANN,--

I have been requested by Hannah Hamilton--may Heaven forgive
her!--to find lecture engagements for a Miss Ramsay, Miss
Alexandrina Ramsay, who wants to tell the American public what she
knows about Dante. Why a Scotchwoman should be turned loose in the
Inferno, I cannot say; but it seems her father or her grandfather
wrote school-books, and she is carrying on the educational
traditions of the family. Hannah made the unholy suggestion that she
should speak at the Contemporary Club, and offered as an inducement