lars, and had invested
it in government funds. Through the influence of a dear friend who was
in a banking establishment, and to whom she had confided her secret,
she was enabled to get the bonds at their face value.

It was only a little at a time--sometimes a very little--but those
littles multiplied by other littles, grew amazingly. The husbandman
who would sit himself down by a hill of corn, and wait to see the
tender blades put forth would be disheartened; but he knows if he
plants the tiny seed, and cultivates it as he ought, the harvest of
golden grain will come at length.

Albert and Alice were married in the spring of 1865. It was on an
evening of August, 1870, that Albert came home. He had been notified
that they must leave the cottage. They must give up the pleasant home,
and lose the little garden they had cultivated with so much fondness
and care.

"The owner wishes to sell," he exclaimed; "and has an offer. He asks
two thousand dollars, and must have five hundred down."

Alice's eyes gleamed with radiant delight.

She had been thinking for some time that she must let her husband into
her secret. It had begun to wear upon her. And now the time had come
as by providential interposition.

She got up and went away to her cabinet, and when she came back she
brought a little book in her hand.

"Albert!" said she, "lets you and I buy the cottage."

Albert looked at her in amazement; and directly it flashed upon him
that there was too much solemnity in her look and tone for badinage.
Something that he had noticed during the past few months came back to
him, and he trembled with the weight of suspense that fell upon him.

Alice then showed her book--that she had more than eight hundred
dollars in the bank. The ice was broken--she told her story in
glowing words. She told how she had saved up little by little, and how
she had at length found herself able to purchase a fifty-dollar bond.
And then she told how her uncle in the banking-house had taken charge
of her investment; and how, under his management, the interest had
accrued in amazing volume.

But the grand result was not the chief thing. The chief thing was the
beginning--was the very little which had been religiously saved until
the second little could be added to it.

And now, as a result of his wife's careful and tireless working,
Albert found something upon which his ambition could take a fair
start. He never could himself, from so small a co