y native land of which I have any
recollection. There was another little contribution--a pious little
contribution, like the first. Where it was written, or what it was
about, or where it was printed, it is impossible to remember; but I
know that it appeared in some extremely orthodox young people's
periodical--I think, one with a missionary predilection. The point of
interest I find to have been that I was paid for it.

With the exception of some private capital amassed by abstaining from
butter (a method of creating a fortune of whose wisdom, I must say, I
had the same doubts then that I have now), this was the first money I
had ever earned. The sum was two dollars and a half. It became my
immediate purpose not to squander this wealth. I had no spending money
in particular that I recall. Three cents a week was, I believe, for
years the limit of my personal income, and I am compelled to own that
this sum was not expended at book-stalls, or for the benefit of the
heathen who appealed to the generosity of professors' daughters
through the treasurer of the chapel Sunday-school; but went solidly
for cream cakes and apple turnovers alternately, one each week.

[Illustration: VIEW FROM THE WESTERN WINDOW OF THE STUDY IN PROFESSOR
AUSTIN PHELPS'S HOUSE, ANDOVER, MASSACHUSETTS.]

Two dollars and a half represented to me a standard of munificent
possession which it would be difficult to make most girls in their
first teens, and socially situated today as I was then, understand. To
waste this fortune in riotous living was impossible. From the hour
that I received that check for "two-fifty," cream cakes began to wear
a juvenile air, and turnovers seemed unworthy of my position in life.
I remember begging to be allowed to invest the sum "in pictures," and
that my father, gently diverting my selection from a frowsy and
popular "Hope" at whose memory I shudder even yet, induced me to find
that I preferred some excellent photographs of Thorwaldsen's "Night"
and "Morning," which he framed for me, and which hang in our rooms
to-day.

It is impossible to forget the sense of dignity which marks the hour
when one becomes a wage-earner. The humorous side of it is the least
of it--or was in my case. I felt that I had suddenly acquired
value--to myself, to my family, and to the world.

Probably all people who write "for a living" would agree with me in
recalling the first check as the largest and most luxurious of life.

THE UND