lives eight miles out of town, on a hundred
lordly acres. She has an adoring husband--the tall, handsome,
impressive-looking youth of my prophetic soul--and an adored infant six
months old. Her husband is a scion of one of the oldest and wealthiest
families in the city, and he has already made his mark in the political
field. He has been a Congressman, and his admirers are talking of
giving him the next party nomination--not my party (so you see that my
partiality does not proceed from political affiliation)--for Governor.
He is altogether a delightful young man; and as for the baby--.

Josephine broke in upon my rhapsodies over my grandson to say again,
for about the fiftieth time during the last year:

"To think, Fred, that though you saw him face to face, you never
realized that your magnificent unknown was merely Harold Bruce, whom
you had seen and shaken hands with under our roof time and time again.
I laugh whenever I think of it. You gave me a fright that day, when
you told me that you had run across Winona in the company of a
mysterious stranger, which I haven't fully recovered from yet, in spite
of the fact that everything has turned out so well. I dreamed that
night that she had married a professional gambler, who cut her throat
in the course of the first six months because the dear child refused to
aid and abet his nefarious schemes."

I replied, meekly, for the fiftieth time, something as to the agonies I
had undergone for several years in trying to distinguish one young man
from another when they had presented themselves at my house in
stereotyped evening dress and done me the honor of squeezing my hand so
hard that it was evidently in mistake for the hand of one of my girls.
But though my plea has a sardonic look, the words were spoken on this
day of days--even as Josephine's were spoken--with an air of gentle,
joyous reminiscence, as though, which was indeed the case, we found
delight in reviewing again and again the details of the great happiness
which has been granted to us in the marriage of our beautiful daughter
to one worthy of her.

We drove up the long avenue of tall, stately pines, and found her
sitting with her husband and their little hostage to fortune enjoying
the glorious mellow sunshine. The tiny monarch sat in his wagon
playing with a handful of autumn leaves which his father, with proud
paternal indifference to the immaculate surface of the silken carriage
blanket, had bestowed