the Hospital. It now lies in the
way of American women to take up the office, and, we may trust, to
"better the instruction."

* * * * *

A STORY OF THANKSGIVING-TIME.

Old Jacob Newell sat despondent beside his sitting-room fire.
Gray-haired and venerable, with a hundred hard lines, telling of the
work of time and struggle and misfortune, furrowing his pale face, he
looked the incarnation of silent sorrow and hopelessness, waiting in
quiet meekness for the advent of the King of Terrors: waiting, but not
hoping, for his coming; without desire to die, but with no dread of
death.

At a short distance from him, in an ancient straight-backed
rocking-chair, dark with age, and clumsy in its antique carvings, sat
his wife. Stiffly upright, and with an almost painful primness in dress
and figure, she sat knitting rapidly and with closed eyes. Her face was
rigid as a mask; the motion in her fingers, as she plied her needles,
was spasmodic and machine-like; the figure, though quiet, wore an air of
iron repose that was most uneasy and unnatural. Still, through the mask
and from the figure there stole the aspect and air of one who had within
her deep wells of sweetness and love which only strong training or power
of education had thus covered up and obscured. She looked of that stern
Puritanical stock whose iron will conquered the severity of New England
winters and overcame the stubbornness of its granite hills, and whose
idea of a perfect life consisted in the rigorous discharge of all
Christian duties, and the banishment, forever and at all times, of the
levity of pleasure and the folly of amusement. She could have walked,
if need were, with composure to the stake; but she could neither have
joined in a game at cards, nor have entered into a romp with little
children. All this was plainly to be seen in the stern repose of her
countenance and the stiff harshness of her figure.

Upon the stained deal table, standing a little in the rear and partially
between the two, reposed an open Bible. Between its leaves lay a pair of
large, old-fashioned, silver-bowed spectacles, which the husband had but
recently laid there, after reading the usual daily chapter of Holy Writ.
He had ceased but a moment before, and had laid them down with a heavy
sigh, for his heart to-day was sorely oppressed; and no wonder; for,
following his gaze around the room, we find upon the otherwise bare
walls five sad mement