ng. We should make
them into serviceable aprons to protect your dresses. Mary, neatness
is an attribute that every self-respecting housewife should
assiduously cultivate, and no one can be neat in a kitchen without a
suitable apron to protect one from grime, flour and dust."

"What a pretty challis dress; its cream-colored ground sprinkled over
with pink rose buds!"

Mary sighed. "I always did love that dress, Aunt Sarah, 'Twas so
becoming, and he--he--admired it so!"

"And HE, can do so still," replied Aunt Sarah, with a merry twinkle in
her kind, clear, gray eyes, "for that pale-green suesine skirt,
slightly faded, will make an excellent lining, with cotton for an
interlining, and pale green Germantown yarn with which to tie the
comfortable. At small cost you'll have a dainty, warm spread which
will be extremely pretty in the home you are planning with HIM. I have
several very pretty-old-style patchwork quilts in a box in the attic
which I shall give you when you start housekeeping. That pretty
dotted, ungored Swiss skirt will make dainty, ruffled sash curtains
for bedroom windows. Mary, sometimes small beginnings make great
endings; if you make the best of your small belongings, some day your
homely surroundings will be metamorphosed into what, in your present
circumstances, would seem like extravagant luxuries. An economical
young couple, beginning life with a homely, home-made rag carpet, have
achieved in middle age, by their own energy and industry, carpets of
tapestry and rich velvet, and costly furniture in keeping; but,
never--never, dear, are they so valued, I assure you, as those
inexpensive articles, conceived by our inventive brain and
manufactured by our own deft fingers during our happy Springtime of
life when, with our young lover husband, we built our home nest on the
foundation of pure, unselfish, self-sacrificing love."

Aunt Sarah sighed; memory led her far back to when she had planned her
home with her lover, John Landis, still her lover, though both have
grown gray together, and shared alike the joys and sorrows of the
passing years. Aunt Sarah had always been the perfect "housemother" or
"Haus Frau," as the Germans phrase it, and on every line of her
matured face could be read an anxious care for the family welfare.
Truly could it be said of her, in the language of Henry Ward Beecher:
"Whoever makes home seem to the young dearer and happier is a public
benefactor."

Aunt Sarah said earnestl