ndomitable energy. She was a tall, dark, thin
woman who had once been handsome. Poor creature--how incessantly she
toiled, and how much she endured!

She had three graceful and alluring daughters,--Ella, nineteen, Cora,
sixteen, and Martha, a quiet little mouse of about ten years of age.
Ella was a girl of unusual attainment, a teacher, self-contained and
womanly, with whom we all, promptly, fell in love. Cora, a moody,
dark-eyed, passionate girl who sometimes glowed with friendly smiles and
sometimes glowered in anger, was less adored. Neither of them considered
Burton or myself worthy of serious notice. On the contrary, we were
necessary nuisances.

To me Ella was a queen, a kindly queen, ever ready to help me out with
my algebra. Everything she did seemed to me instinct with womanly grace.
No doubt she read the worship in my eyes, but her attitude was that of
an older sister. Cora, being nearer my own age, awed me not at all. On
the contrary, we were more inclined to battle than to coo. Her coolness
toward me, I soon discovered, was sustained by her growing interest in a
young man from Cerro Gordo County.

We were a happy, noisy gang, and undoubtedly gave poor Mrs. Leete a
great deal of trouble. There was Boggs (who had lost part of one ear in
some fracas with Jack Frost) who paced up and down his room declining
Latin verbs with painful pertinacity, and Burton who loved a jest but
never made one, and Joe Pritchard, who was interested mainly in politics
and oratory, and finally that criminally well-dressed young book agent
(with whom we had very little in common) and myself. In cold weather we
all herded in the dining room to keep from freezing, and our weekly
scrub took place after we got home to our own warm kitchens and the
family wash-tubs.

Life was a pure joy to Burton as to me. Each day was a poem, each night
a dreamless sleep! Each morning at half past eight we went to the
Seminary and at four o'clock left it with regret. I should like to say
that we studied hard every night, burning a great deal of kerosene oil,
but I cannot do so.--We had a good time. The learning, (so far as I can
recall) was incidental.

It happened that my closest friends, aside from Burton, were pupils of
the public school and for that reason I kept my membership in the
Adelphian Society which met every Monday evening. My activities there, I
find, made up a large part of my life during this second winter. I not
only debated furious