ful to make every call tell, and her visitors said it was
delightful to go to see her, she had such fresh things to say to them
and such interesting questions to ask. She studied botany by herself and
became expert. She learned mathematics so well in the public school that
when she began to think she would like to see something of the world
outside her corner, she was able to get good places to teach. First,
she went to a seaside village and there she learned a thousand new
things. Then she spent a few years at the West, varying her route in
going and coming till she had seen a large part of her own country. By
this time she had saved enough money to go abroad and study quietly for
a year. Now, she had her French and German, and she saw pictures and
heard music and visited cathedrals and discovered how other people
lived. But by and by her sisters died, and she was needed at home. Of
course she was a great acquisition in the village, and she had many
sources of enjoyment in pursuing the studies she had begun. But she
wanted new thoughts too. She invited a friend to spend a month with her,
and when she found that her friend had made a study of chemistry she
sent for a few dollars' worth of chemicals and set up a satisfactory
laboratory in the barn. Naturally she made the acquaintance of every
desirable person who visited the village, and moreover her Boston
relatives were always eager to have her for a guest, as she was
interested in all their favorite pursuits in an entirely original way.

Another girl lived in one little town till she was thirty, and then
married a man of culture whose home was in the city. His sisters said
she was a beauty and had good taste in dress; and they thought these
things had captivated their brother. But first they had to own that she
was a woman of fine character, good-tempered, dignified, truthful and
modest, for these virtues flourish in the country quite as often as in
the city. But still, they knew that she had had no education, and they
expected no intellectual companionship. Then it proved that she had read
more thoughtfully than they had. They belonged to a dozen literary
societies, but the one little village Shakespeare Club had done good
work. The sisters always went to the theatre every week in the winter,
but the bride who could count on her fingers the plays she had heard,
had selected these so carefully that her taste was already well formed.
Then she proved to be musical. Small