letters to one of her fifty everlasting
friends. She is one of the female patriots who save the post-office
department from being a disastrous loss to the treasury. Herbert is
thinking of the great radical difference in the two sexes, which
legislation will probably never change; that leads a woman always, to
write letters on her lap and a man on a table,--a distinction which
is commended to the notice of the anti-suffragists.

The Mistress, in a pretty little breakfast-cap, is moving about the
room with a feather-duster, whisking invisible dust from the
picture-frames, and talking with the Parson, who has just come in, and
is thawing the snow from his boots on the hearth. The Parson says the
thermometer is 15 deg., and going down; that there is a snowdrift across
the main church entrance three feet high, and that the house looks as if
it had gone into winter quarters, religion and all. There were only ten
persons at the conference meeting last night, and seven of those were
women; he wonders how many weather-proof Christians there are in the
parish, anyhow.

The Fire-Tender is in the adjoining library, pretending to write; but
it is a poor day for ideas. He has written his wife's name about
eleven hundred times, and cannot get any farther. He hears the
Mistress tell the Parson that she believes he is trying to write a
lecture on the Celtic Influence in Literature. The Parson says that
it is a first-rate subject, if there were any such influence, and
asks why he does n't take a shovel and make a path to the gate.
Mandeville says that, by George! he himself should like no better
fun, but it wouldn't look well for a visitor to do it. The
Fire-Tender, not to be disturbed by this sort of chaff, keeps on
writing his wife's name.

Then the Parson and the Mistress fall to talking about the
soup-relief, and about old Mrs. Grumples in Pig Alley, who had a
present of one of Stowe's Illustrated Self-Acting Bibles on
Christmas, when she had n't coal enough in the house to heat her
gruel; and about a family behind the church, a widow and six little
children and three dogs; and he did n't believe that any of them had
known what it was to be warm in three weeks, and as to food, the
woman said, she could hardly beg cold victuals enough to keep the
dogs alive.

The Mistress slipped out into the kitchen to fill a basket with
provisions and send it somewhere; and when the Fire-Tender brought in
a new forestick, Mandeville, who alway