sist in
throwing light upon the subject. If there is some degree of vagueness
in its statement of the aims and purposes with which the movement
has been set on foot, it is probable that this exactly represents the
state of mind of the great majority of those who are engaged in it.
The one tangible thing which it would seem to be accomplishing, a
combination of the farmers for the purchase of pianos and agricultural
implements at wholesale prices, is not of a very startling character;
and if this can be attained at no greater cost or trouble to the
individual "Patrons" than that of "decorating the granges" and taking
part in the singing and the symbolical rites, a considerable advantage
will no doubt have been gained. How the cost of transportation is
to be reduced, or why the railroads, by facilitating the exchange of
productions, should have become the _bete noire_ of the producers, are
points on which more definite information would seem to be required.
But "the people" being now "aroused," and the revolution in progress,
we have only to await events in that hopeful state of mind which such
announcements are calculated to inspire.--ED.]

ON THE CHURCH STEPS.

CHAPTER VI.

I had a busy week of it in New York--copying out instructions, taking
notes of marriages and intermarriages in 1690, and writing each day
a long, pleading letter to Bessie. There was a double strain upon me:
all the arrangements for my client's claims, and in an undercurrent
the arguments to overcome Bessie's decision, went on in my brain side
by side.

I could not, I wrote to her, make the voyage without her. It would be
the shipwreck of all my new hopes. It was cruel in her to have
raised such hopes unless she was willing to fulfill them: it made the
separation all the harder. I could not and would not give up the plan.
"I have engaged our passage in the Wednesday's steamer: say yes, dear
child, and I will write to Dr. Wilder from here."

I could not leave for Lenox before Saturday morning, and I hoped to be
married on the evening of that day. But to all my pleading came "No,"
simply written across a sheet of note-paper in my darling's graceful
hand.

Well, I would go up on the Saturday, nevertheless. She would surely
yield when she saw me faithful to my word.

"I shall be a sorry-looking bride-groom," I thought as I surveyed
myself in the little mirror at the office. It was Friday night, and we
were shutting up. We had worked l