hed home in the afternoon well-nigh
fainting, the books were so heavy. Who would not have felt kindly to
her? So gentle she was, so dreadfully shy and timid, her eyes so eager,
so full of unconscious pathos. 'Hood's little girl,' said the people on
the way who saw her pass daily, and, however completely strangers, they
said it with a certain kindness of tone and meaning. A little thing that
happened one day--take it as an anecdote. On her way to school she
passed some boys who were pelting a most wretched dog, a poor, scraggy
beast driven into a corner. Emily, so timid usually she could not raise
her eyes before a stranger, stopped, quivering all over, _commanded_
them to cease their brutality, divine compassion become a heroism. The
boys somehow did her bidding, and walked on together. Emily stayed
behind, opened her bag, threw something for the dog to eat. It was half
her dinner.

Her mind braced itself. She had a passionate love of learning; all books
were food to her. Fortunately there was the library of the Mechanics'
Institute; but for that she would have come short of mental sustenance,
for her father had never been able to buy mole than a dozen volumes, and
these all dealt with matters of physical science. The strange things she
read, books which came down to her from the shelves with a thickness of
dust upon them; histories of Greece and Rome ('Not much asked for,
these,' said the librarian), translations of old classics, the Koran,
Mosheim's 'Ecclesiastical History,' works of Swedenborg, all the poetry
she could lay hands on, novels not a few. One day she asked for a book
on 'Gymnoblastic Hydroids'; the amazing title in the catalogue had
filled her with curiosity; she must know the meaning of everything. She
was not idle, Emily.

But things in the home were going from bad to worse. When Emily was
sixteen, her father scarcely knew where to look for each day's dinner.
Something must be done. Activity took a twofold direction. First of all,
Emily got work as a teacher in an infant's school. It was at her own
motion; she could bear her mother's daily querulousness no longer; she
must take some step. She earned a mere trifle; but it was earning,
instead of being a source of expense. And in the meantime she worked on
for certain examinations which it would benefit her to have passed. The
second thing done was that her father abandoned his office, and obtained
a place in the counting-house of a worsted-mill, under t