s bondage of rigid
routine.

"I have just come back from Mount Mark, where I had my second visit
with little Julia. She is worth the giving up of anything, and the
enduring of everything. She is marvelous.

"When I first saw her, just after Aunt Grace brought her home,--I think
I told you that I went without a new pair of lovely gray shoes at ten
dollars a pair in order to go to Mount Mark to meet her,--she was very
sweet, and all that, but when they are so rosily new they are more like
scientific curiosities than literary inspirations. But I have met her
again, and I am everlastingly converted to the domestic enslavement of
women. One little Julia is worth it. So as soon as I find the
husband, I am going to cultivate my eleven children. You remember that
was the career I picked out in the days of my tender youth.

"Her face is big and round and white, and her eyes are bluer than any
summer sky the poets could rave about. Her lips are the original
Cupid's bow,--in fact, Julia's lips have about convinced me that Cupid
must have been a woman, certainly he could ask no more deadly weapon
for shattering the hearts of men. Her hair is comical. It is yellow
gold, but it sticks straight out in every direction. It is the most
aggravatingly, irresistibly defiant hair you ever saw in your life. It
makes you kiss it, and brush it, and soak it in water, and shake Julia
for having it, and then fall in love with her all over again.

"She is just beginning to talk. When I arrived the whole family was
assembled to do me honor, Prudence and Fairy, Lark and all the babies.
Julia seemed to resent her temporary eclipse in the limelight. She
crowed in a compelling way, and when I advanced to bow reverently
before her, she pointed a fat, accusing finger at me, and said, 'Who is
'at?' Her very first word,--and no presidential message ever provoked
half the storm of approval her little phrase called forth. We laughed,
and kissed each other, and begged her to say it again, and Prudence
said 'Oh, if Carol could have heard that,' and then we all rushed off
and cried and scolded each other for being so silly, and Julia
screamed. Oh, it was a formal afternoon reception all right.

"And I am putting a little three-line ad in the morning _Tribune_.
'Young, accomplished, attractive lady without means, of strong domestic
tendencies, desires a husband, eugenic, rich, good looking. Object
matrimony.'

"Of course I know that I repe