over me a heavy
blanket and then hastily tiptoeing out again.

The matin-bells, or the birds, or both, awoke me early, but when I got
downstairs I found my host had preceded me. His fine face looked fresh and
strong, and yet I wondered when he had slept.

After breakfast, the old housekeeper hovered near.

"What is it, Margaret?" said the Father, gently.

"You haven't forgotten your engagement?" asked the woman, with just a
quaver of anxiety.

"Oh no, Margaret"; then turning to me, "Come, you shall go with me--we
will talk of Fenelon and Madame Guyon as we walk. It is eight miles and
back, but you will not mind the distance. Oh, didn't I tell you where I'm
going? You saw the old man at the church last night--it is his
daughter--she is dying--dying of consumption. She has not been a good
girl. She went away to Paris, three years ago, and her parents never heard
from her. We tried to find her, but could not; and now she has come home
of her own accord--come home to die. I baptized her twenty years ago--how
fast the time has flown!"

The priest took a stout staff from the corner, and handing me its mate we
started away. Down the white, dusty highway we went; out on the stony road
where yesterday, as the darkness gathered, trudged an old man in wooden
shoes and with a cordwood cudgel--at his heels a dog of Flanders.

HARRIET MARTINEAU

You better live your best and act your best and think your best
today; for today is the sure preparation for tomorrow and all the
other tomorrows that follow.
--_Life's Uses_

[Illustration: HARRIET MARTINEAU]

I believe it was Thackeray who once expressed a regret that Harriet
Martineau had not shown better judgment in choosing her parents.

She was born into one of those big families where there is not love enough
to go 'round. The mother was a robustious woman with a termagant temper;
she was what you call "practical." She arose each morning, like Solomon's
ideal wife, while it was yet dark, and proceeded to set her house in
order. She made the children go to bed when they were not sleepy and get
up when they were. There was no beauty-sleep in that household, not even
forty winks; and did any member prove recreant and require a douse of cold
water, not only did he get the douse but he also heard quoted for a year
and a day that remark concerning the sluggard, "A little sleep, a little
slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: so shall thy povert