em. Had it been
unnecessary to earn bread for herself and little Roscoe, I am persuaded
that she would still have been unremitting in her efforts to uplift us.
In that event she might, it is true, have read us more papers and sold
us fewer books; but she would have allowed herself as little leisure.

That Little Arcady was unequal to this broader view, however, was to be
inferred from comments made in the hearing of and often, in truth, meant
for the ears of Solon Denney. The burden was shifted to his poor
shoulders with as little concern as if our best citizens had not
cooeperated with him in the original move, with grateful applause for its
ingenious and fanciful daring. In ways devoid of his own vaunted
subtlety, it was conveyed to Solon that Little Arcady expected him to do
something. This was after the town had been cleanly canvassed for two
monthly magazines--one of which had a dress-pattern in each number, to
be cut out on the dotted line--and after our heroine had gallantly
returned to the charge with a rather heavy "Handbook of Science for the
Home,"--a book costing two dollars and fifty cents and treating of many
matters, such as, how to conduct electrical experiments in a
drawing-room, how to cleanse linen of ink-stains, how the world was
made, who invented gun-powder, and how to restore the drowned. I recite
these from memory, not having at hand either of my own two copies of
this valuable work. Upon myself Mrs. Potts was never to call in vain,
for to me she was an important card miraculously shuffled into the right
place in the game. It was the custom of Miss Caroline, also, to sign
gladly for whatsoever Mrs. Potts signified would be to her advantage.
She gave the "Handbook of Science" to Clem, who, being strongly moved by
any group of figures over six, rejoiced passionately to read the weight
of the earth in net tons, and to dwell upon those vastly extensive
distances affected by astronomers.

But abroad in the town there was not enough of this complaisance nor of
this passion for mere numerals to prevent worry from creasing the brow
of Solon Denney.

"The good God helped him once, but it looks like he'd have to help
himself now," said Uncle Billy McCormick, the day he refused to
subscribe for an improving book on the ground that the clock-shelf
wouldn't hold another one. And this view of the situation came also to
be the desperate view of Solon himself. That he suffered a black hour
each week when Mrs.