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acquired very idle habits, and goes by the name of Signor Far Niente. He pretends to lead an easy life, but is really the most miserable fellow in the family."

"Ö, take me back!-take me back!" cried poor little Daffydowndilly, bursting into tears. "If there is nothing but Toil all the world over, I may just as well go back to the schoolhouse!"

"Yonder it is, there is the schoolhouse!" said the stranger; for though he and little Daffydowndilly had taken a great many steps, they had travelled in a circle instead of a straight line. "Come; we will go back to school together."

There was something in his companion's voice that little Daffydowndilly now remembered; and it is strange that he had not remembered it sooner. Looking up into his face, behold! there again was the likeness of old Mr. Toil; so that the poor child had been in company with Toil all day, even while he was doing his best to run away from him. Some people, to whom I have told little Daffydowndilly's story, are of opinion that old Mr. Toil was a magician, and possessed the power of multiplying himself into as many shapes as he saw fit.

Be this as it may, little Daffydowndilly had learned a good lesson, and from that time forward was diligent at his task, because he knew that diligence is not a whit more toilsome than sport or idleness. And when he became better acquainted with Mr. Toil, he began to think that his ways were not so very disagreeable, and that the old schoolmaster's smile of approbation made his face almost as pleasant as even that of Daffydowndilly's mother.

RICH AND POOR.

It is very easy for you, O respectable citizen, seated in your easy chair, with your feet on the fender, to hold forth on the misconduct of the people, -very easy for you to censure their extravagant and vicious habits,-very easy for you to be a pattern of frugality, of rectitude, of sobriety. What else should you be? Here are you, surrounded by comforts, possessing multiplied sources of lawful happiness, with a reputation to maintain, an ambition to fulfil, and the prospect of a competency for your old

age.

A shame indeed would it be, if with these advantages you were not well regulated in your behaviour; you have a cheerful home, are warmly and cleanly clad, and fare, if not sumptuously, every day, at any rate abundantly. For your hours of relaxation there are amusements; a newspaper arrives regularly to satisfy your curiosity. If your tastes are literary, books may be had in plenty; and there is a piano if you like music. You can afford to entertain your friends, and are entertained in return. There are lectures, and concerts, and exhibitions accessible if you incline to them. You may have a holiday when you choose to take one, and can spare money for an annual trip to the sea-side. And, enjoying all these privileges, you take credit to yourself for being a well-conducted man: small praise to you for it! if you do not contract dissipated habits, where is the merit? you have few incentives to do so. It is no honour to you that you do not spend your savings in sensual gratification; you have pleasures enough without. But what would you do if placed in the position of the labourer?-how would these virtues of yours stand the wear and tear of poverty? where would your prudence and self-denial be if you were deprived of all the hopes that now stimulate you?-if you had no better prospect than that of the Dorsetshire farm-servant with his seven shillings a

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week, or that of the perpetually-straitened stockingweaver, or that of the mill-hand with his periodical suspensions of work? Let us see you tied to an irksome employment from dawn till dusk; fed on meagre food, and scarcely enough of that; married to a factory-girl ignorant of domestic management; deprived of the enjoyments which education opens up; with no place of recreation but the pot-house; and then let us see whether you would be as steady as you are. Suppose your savings had to be made, not, as now, out of surplus income, but out of wages already insufficient for necessaries, and then consider whether to be provident would be as easy as you at present find it. Conceive yourself one of a despised class, contemptuously termed "the great unwashed,' stigmatized as brutish, stolid, vicious; suspected of harbouring wicked designs, excluded from the dignity of citizenship, and then say whether the desire to be respectable would be as practically operative on you as now. Lastly, imagine that, seeing your capacities were but ordinary, your education next to nothing, and your competitors innumerable, you despaired of ever attaining to a higher station, and then think whether the incentives to perseverance and forethought would be as strong as your existing ones. Realize these circumstances, O comfortable citizen! and then answer whether the reckless, disorderly habits of the people are so inexcusable.-Spencer's Social Statics.

THE SPIRIT OF THE AGE.

A spirit of self-help lies at the bottom of all success. Self-reliance is the backbone of all heroism of character. The spirit to work thoroughly at whatever has to be done, to grapple hand to hand with difficulties, and strangle them instead of seeking to evade them, is the primeval stuff out of which men and demigods are made. But we must beware how we allow our views to centre in ourselves; we are none of us alone in the world; it is not for ourselves alone that we work and strive. Man does much by himself, but all great objects have been attained when he has joined himself with others and worked in concert with them. Vicious as the working and as the effects of some of these joint-stock companies may be, still they contain a principle that will gradually reorganize the whole machinery of society. Co-operation will gradually take the place of competition. A great social question is opening up. The enormous development of our material and industrial interests has created a new order of men in this country, and, indeed, throughout Europe. The practical republicanism of trade has induced an entirely new range of thoughts and interests, of which our fathers never dreamed. The resources of trade have, however, hitherto been like a rich and newly-discovered land, where any new-comer has been at liberty to work for his own advantage in any way he chose. Complicated questions of conflicting interests are arising; masters and men, capital and labour, are beginning to stand in antagonism with each other. It is an immense question that is lying before us. There will be a struggle, the end of which none of us may live to see, but I believe firmly that the true laws of commerce will be laid down, and that labour will be organized and its forces disciplined, so that their peaceful exploits will be more extended and brilliant than those achieved by war and destruction. Side by side with this growing antagonism of interests, there is arising the idea of association, which will mature and develop itself gradually, till, in the fulness of time, it will have strength to gather together the conflicting interests into one.-From Marian Withers, by Miss Jewsbury.

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THERE was nothing but azure and gold in the sky,
The lips of the young rose were yawning and dry,
And each blossom appealed, with luxurious sigh,

To its neighbouring flower.

The Carnation exclaimed, "I am really too bright;"
The Lily drawled out "I shall faint with the light ;"
And a troop of red Poppies cried out in their might,
"Let us pray for a shower."

The Myrtle-leaf said, “I'm too wearied to shine,
And the Jasmine quite languidly lisped to the Vine
"Your ringlets, I think, are more lanky than mine,"
Then sunk down in her bower.

"There is really too much of this Midsummer blaze," Said the Sage plant, while screening her root from the rays;

"The Poppies are right, though I hate their bold ways,

We must ask for a shower."

They framed the petition, while Flora and Jove
Most attentively heard, and in fulness of love
A dark, mist-laden messenger wandered above
For a shadowy hour.

The gloom came on suddenly,-that we must own,— And we wondered where all the world's beauty had flown,

As the clouds gathered up and the rain rattled down
In a leaf-laying shower.

The blossoms fell prostrate and pensive awhile,
Bending down to the earth in most pitiful style,
Even after Apollo reburnished his smile

With more glorious power.

But at last they stood up in their strength, one by one, And laughed out in the face of the beautiful sun, With a perfume and colour they could not have done Were it not for the shower.

"It was sad while it lasted," the Mignonette said, "To be splashed by the dust and be stretched in the shade;"

"Why yes," said the Stock, "but how soon we should fade,

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Have the wit of the blossoms, and ask for no more
At the hands of Dame Fortune, in station or store,
But think it a blessing if sorrow should pour,
Or disquietude lower.

Oh the cloud and the rain-drop are exquisite things,
Though they dim for a season our butterfly wings,
For the sweetest and purest unceasingly springs
After a shower.

ELIZA COOK.

ANECDOTE OF THE DOG.

He

Of the dog we can all be eloquent; and I could relate "true anecdotes" of some of my canine favourites that would hardly be credited. Still, with all my success in teaching dogs to do marvellous things, I never could teach them that when they jumped up with dirty feet, there was an injury done to my clothes. When they obeyed the command of "Down, sir!" sometimes enforced by a gentle coup de main, they never could reason about the "why and because." Nor have I ever yet met with any dog, or ever heard of any dog, that could be "argued with" on these moral proprieties and observances. Talking of the memory of dogs-one of mine, "Dash" by name, was once stolen from me. After being absent thirteen months, he one day entered my office in town, with a long string tied round his neck: he had broken away from the fellow who held him prisoner. Our meeting may be imagined. I discovered the thief, had him apprehended, and took him before a magistrate. swore the dog was his, and called witnesses to bear him out. Mr. Kidd," said Mr. Twyford, 66 can you give us any satisfactory proof of this dog being your property?" Placing my mouth to the dog's ear,-first giving him a knowing look, and whispering a little masonic communication, known to us two only, "Dash" immediately reared up on his hind legs, and went through a series of gymnastic manœuvres with a stick, guided meanwhile by my eye, which set the whole court in a roar. My evidence needed no further corroboration; the thief stood committed, "Dash" was liberated, and amidst the cheers of the multitude we bounded merrily homewards. The réunion among my "household gods" may be imagined. It would be farcical to relate it, nor must I dwell upon certain other rare excellencies of this same dog, with whom, and his equally sagacious better half, "Fanny," I passed many years of happy intimacy.-Kidd's Essays on Instinct and Reason.

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DIFFICULTIES USEFUL.

It is difficulties which give birth to miracles. It is not every calamity that is a curse, and early adversity is often a blessing. Perhaps Madame de Maintenon would never have mounted a throne had not her cradle been rocked in a prison. Surmounted obstacles not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles, for virtue must be learnt, though, unfortunately, some of the vices come as it were by inspiration. The austerities of our northern climate are thought to be the cause of our abundant comforts, as our wintry nights and our stormy seas have given us a race of seamen perhaps unequalled, and certainly not surpassed by any in the world.-Sharpe's Essays.

Printed by Cox (Brothers) & WYMAN, 74-75, Great Queen Street, London; and published by CHARLES COOK, at the Office of the Journal, 3, Raquet Court, Fleet Street.

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COMFORT versus MUDDLE.

WE English folks love Comfort dearly. The word Comfort, is said to be peculiarly English; and untranslatable, in its full meaning, into any foreign language. It might almost be said of many families -they worship Comfort. That it is their Household god, is not saying too much.

Comfort is closely identified with the idea of Home. At least, we English never dissociate the one notion from the other. Abroad, the people can contrive to live out of doors. They find pleasure in public gardens or casinos, listening to music and sipping coffee. In warmer climes, they sun themselves in the streets. Half their life is in public. The genial air woos them forth, and keeps them out of doors. They enter their houses merely to eat and sleep. They scarcely can be said to live there.

How different it is with us! The raw air without, during so many months in the year, drives us within doors. Hence we cultivate all manner of home pleasures. Hence the host of delightful associations which rise up in the mind at the very mention of the word. Hence our household god--Comfort.

We are not satisfied merely with a home. It must be comfortable. The most wretched are indeed those who have no homes-the homeless! But not less wretched are those whose homes are without comfortthose of whom Charles Lamb once said," the homes of the very poor are no homes." And why not? Because they are without comfort. It is Comfort, then, that is the very soul of the home-its essential principle-its vital element.

Comfort does not mean merely warmth, good furniture, and good eating and drinking. It means something far more than this. It includes cleanliness, pure air, order, frugality,-in a word, housethrift and domestic government. Comfort is the soil in which the human being grows,-not only physically, but morally also. It lies, indeed, at the root of many virtues.

Do not think that wealth is necessary for comfort. Luxury requires wealth, but not comfort. A poor man's home, moderately supplied with the necessaries of life, presided over by a cleanly, frugal housewife, may contain all the elements of comfortable living. Of course, there must be a sufficiency of the temporal means to supply these necessaries, without leaving

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any "aching void" to be filled up. But our conviction is, that comfortlessness is caused, in the great majority of cases, not so much by the absence of the sufficient means, as by the want of the requisite knowledge of housethrift and domestic management. And this is a matter which women should look to.

Comfort, it must be admitted, is in a great measure a relative term. What is comfort to one man, would be deemed wretchedness by another accustomed to nicer habits of living. Even the commonest mechanic of this day would consider it misery to have to live after the style of nobles a few centuries back; to sleep on straw beds, and live in rooms littered with rushes; without glazed windows to their apartments, and these lit up in the evenings by a pine torch, the wind careering through the dreary chamber. In respect of the elements of substantial comfort, there can be no question that the English people have made extraordinary progress during the last few centuries.

See the working man's cottage now,-what it is, or what it ought to be. All tight and snug, dry and clean; the floor swept and sanded; a bright fire blazing in the chimney; a clean, warm bed to lie in ; books on the shelf, and flowers in the window; a home of contentment, taste, and comfort. That is what every house, even the poorest man's, ought to be.

But that is not all.

Where there is comfort, there is contentment and absence of fidget. Comfort depends as much on persons as on "things." And it is out of the character and temper of those who govern households, that the feeling of comfort arises, much more than out of handsome furniture, warm rooms, or any sort of home luxuries and conveniences.

Comfortable people are kindly-tempered. That may be set down as an invariable condition of comfort. There must be peace, mutual forbearance, mutual help, and a disposition to make the best of everything. "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith."

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they are not wanting, either, in a proper hospitality and benevolence on fitting occasions. And what they do in the latter direction, is done without ostentation or loud talking.

Comfortable people do everything in order. They are systematic, steady, sober, industrious. You will never find them in a bustle of tidying-up. As they do everything at the right time, so nothing is done in a hurry, or "slobbered over." Take, for instance, the Quakers, as a class the most comfortable in England; really an embodiment of the highest ideas of domestic comfort. Some think they are even too comfortable; and that their prim ways do not at all accord with the notions of old George Fox, and his "hull of leather." But we live in other times, and have different notions; and Quakers must "progress" like other people.

Comfortable people dress comfortably. They adapt themselves to the season, neither shivering in winter, nor perspiring in summer, in their efforts to toil after a "fashionable appearance." You will find they expend more on warm stockings than on gold rings; and prefer healthy, good, bedding, to gaudy windowcurtains. They do not so much care about dressing "youthful," as to dress comfortably. Their chairs are solid, not gimcrack. They will bear sitting upon, though they may not be ornamental. They do not sport "bright pokers." Their pokers are meant for use, to stir up the fire; and you may see how bright the blaze is. Everything they have is convenient, snug, comfortable, and you have pleasure in feeling yourself in the midst of them.

But look for a moment on the other side of the picture. What is the state of the muddlers--the discomfortable? You know of such,-everybody knows more or less of them.

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Have you never entered a house in a muddle? Where the smell of washing is constant? Where the sitting-room is in a heap of litter with "things' mending, getting-up, or taking to pieces? Where dirty children are running about, falling and squalling alternately, at all hours of the day? Where there is petting and dandling one moment, and scolding and beating the next? Where nothing is clean, nothing mended, nothing ready, nothing done? And in the midst of all, there is the untidy, worn-out, distressed housewife herself, bitter against servants, wroth against children, astonished at husband's complaints, not pleased at untimely visitors (who, by the way, are always untimely at such houses), and in a constant pucker from morn till night, because things don't go right, because things won't go right. And the oddest thing of all in such houses is, that the more work the more dirt, the bigger the washings the greater the stock of dirty clothes, the more strainings at comfort the less comfort there is.

A curious feature of the House of Muddle is, that there inanimate, and elsewhere motionless, objects, become endowed with the most wonderful powers of locomotion; and an agency, or power, or person, called "Nobody," whose very existence is denied in better-regulated houses, seems to become invested with almost supernatural powers of evil. A chair-leg has "got broken," or a dish has "fallen down" and been smashed, or the table has "got scratched," or a dress has "

got torn." It is always "Nobody" that did it; or, if not, then the " 'things" have fallen, or broken, or torn, or scratched themselves,-altogether of their own accord, and out of sheer spite and mischief.

A clever writer on this subject has recently produced a book entitled Home Truths for Home Peace,* which ought to be read and pondered by every house. wife. It is full of golden truths, set off by a rich and

* Effingham Wilson: London. 1851.

pregnant humour. Here is her description of the peculiar characteristics of the households of Muddle, which we have above noted:-" Cups, so long as there have been cups, have slipped out of the maid's hands; and this, not when she has let them go, but whilst holding them as tight as ever she could. Glasses, &c., are constantly falling off the edges of dressers and of tables, although declared by competent judges to have been far removed from such a dangerous position, so that they have evidently moved back again for the purpose of dashing themselves into a thousand shivers. Other articles of fragile materials, but less daring resolution, vary the monotony of their existence, and assert their right to tender consideration, by getting' such chips, cracks, and contusions, as no rational person could ever venture to inflict. Nor are the harder and less sensitive portions of our household furniture innocent of similar offences; the locks, which, as fixtures, are secure from injury by falling, will nevertheless 'get hampered,' stools 'come unlegged,' nails work themselves out,' paint, varnish, &c., rub off,' the best-made chairs will dislocate their arms, the strongest tables break or distort their legs; whilst other objects, too cowardly for self-inflictions, but equally perverse in spirit, will choose the very moment when their presence would be most desirable, to get lost; that is to say--to hide in some out-ofthe-way corner, to which no living soul has ever had access, and in which consequently no member of the family would ever think of looking. * In the same spirit, useless, lumbering articles, always kept at the very top of the house, will get down any number of stairs, or flights of stairs, in order to seek out low company in the kitchen, or to endanger the life or limb of every inmate of the dwelling, by placing themselves, with unblushing effrontery, in a passage. Keys will shake off their rings, and get out of one's very pockets to crawl beneath the hearthrug or leap into the dust-bin. Pitchers, notoriously dry whenever you had approached them to obtain only a drop of water,' will find out the nearest pump, and there get filled 'too full '-rather than lose an opportunity of watering the bed-room floors, as if mustard and cress salads were to spring up from the carpets. Cruets, salt-cellars, and decanters, mock the housewife, who is continually replenishing them,' by as perseveringly discharging their contents; while shirts and other garments, put away on Saturday night without a single stitch or fastening wanting,' and naturally expected to be fit for wear on Sunday morning, will actually get up again in the dead silence of the night, and proceed to distant drawers and wardrobes, that they may enjoy the malignant satisfaction of pulling off each others' strings and buttons! That such are the common contrivances and perversities of which most things are found guilty, under a domestic anarchy, is asserted by all the miscalled heads of these comfortless establishments!"

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Visit the House of Muddle, and you find its character written outside,-on the door-step, on the doorhandle, on the windows,-through which you may even discern something of the muddle that reigns within. Knock or ring, or knock and ring,-it is some time before your call is answered, and then, not until after sundry shufflings and whisperings-now near, now remote,-the noise of rushing up and then down stairs, the hasty opening and shutting of drawers, wherein things to be "put by" are suddenly shoved; until at last, perhaps, a maid fresh from "the wash," or from the work of grate-cleaning, with the brush in her hand, or the draggled-looking mistress herself, stands before you. You enter, stumble over the broom or a dust-pan, surrounded by a clump of dusters. Of course you are told, "We are so busy

with the cleaning," or "the wash," or something else. But it always was so, at whatever time you called at that house.

We need not proceed much further with the House of Muddle. Its rooms are comfortless, even though the furniture be good. The spirit of order is absent, and the spirit of cleanliness is absent with it. Domestic confusion pervades the parlour, the kitchen, and the sleeping-chamber; and when these are combined in one, as in the houses of the poor, the case is still worse. The "head" of the house has the look of a care-worn drudge. A visit there gives you not an atom of pleasure, but only seems to throw things into worse confusion, from the desperate, but unavailing attempts made to put them in order. Of course, where there are children, matters are worse; but, as an Irish lady once observed,--there was no denying that the muddle where there were young children, was much worse; but yet, as far as she could perceive, a muddle where there were no children, was never any better!

We must conclude by giving the genealogies of the two heroines of our brief sketch-Comfort and Muddle.

Comfort is the daughter of Order, and has descended in a right line from Wisdom. She is closely allied to Carefulness, Thrift, Honesty, and Religion. She has been educated by Good Sense, Benevolence, Observation, and Experience; and she is the mother of Cleanliness, Economy, Provident Forethought, Virtue, Prosperity, and Domestic Happiness.

On the other hand, Muddle belongs to the ancient and dishonourable family of Chaos; she is the child of Indifference and Want of Principle; has been educated alternately by Dawdling, Hurry, Stupidity, Obstinacy, and Extravagance; is secretly united to Self-Conceit; and is the parent of Procrastination, Falsehood, Dirt, Waste, Disorder, Distraction, and Desolation.

It would not be easy to detail in all its force the misery which is caused by the early neglect of orderly habits on the part of young women. It is a source, not only of frightful unhappiness in families, but of great public vice; for after all, the world is made up of those whose characters have been formed for good or evil by the early training and example of mothers. This is a subject, indeed, of great importance, which those who have the education of children committed to them, ought never to lose sight of.

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IN one of the smaller American republics, where a Yankee traveller travelled once for weeks in search of a government, giving up the chase after three or four weeks' persevering pursuit of the shadow of authority, and where an acute down-easter was wont every morning to put his head out of window and cry, addressing the first passer by, there lived in a retired and secluded village, high up in the mountains, one Diego Arreghi, a young man of Spanish origin, who, after a sufficiently wandering life, had settled down as a village schoolmaster. Tolerably educated, that is, possessed of the faculty of reading and writing, with a slight knowledge of arithmetic, he found himself too much of a great man to condescend to imitate those around him, and labour at the land, with a view to earning a livelihood. The village in which he resided was sufficiently populous and he remarked when first he reached it in his

wanderings exceedingly well provided with children, in general amongst the South Americans the greatest portion of their wealth and substance. The padré was a good, fat, easy man, who thought that he had no business in the world but to preach of a Sunday, say mass, marry and bury his parishioners. As to giving them any enlightenment of any other kind, he regarded it as totally out of the question, and even, with many eminent individuals in our own time, considered learning rather dangerous than otherwise for the masses. Some few years back, however, a rumour reached his ears that it was beginning to be seriously debated by the government of the republic whether the priests should not be compelled to devote their spare time to infusing into the juvenile mind the elements of education. Father Jerome was alarmed. What were to become of all his happy hours of ease, if after doing his duty on a Sunday, burying and marrying such as needed his ministry, he were during the intervals to be surrounded by a host of boys and girls repeating their alphabet, and, worse than all, learning to count.

Precisely at this moment Diego Arreghi came to the village. He took up his quarters at the priest's house, and in the course of conversation the good father opened his heart to the traveller, and asked his advice and counsel. Diego Arreghi reflected profoundly, and at the expiration of a few minutes, declared that the task of tuition was precisely his forte, and that if assured of the priest's support, he was quite ready at once to devote himself to the establishment of a school, thus, in case of government interference, doing away with the necessity of imposing such a task upon the priest. Father Jerome folded the young man to his arms, offered him his house and his patronage, and until his school was tolerably productive, his table. Diego at once declared it a bargain, and next day gave an order to the monthly carrier to bring from the capital the necessary elementary books. A few weeks later, Diego opened his school, receiving at once universal support, so native is it to the human mind to seek to know, when knowledge is placed within a reasonable distance.

Diego was enraptured, and the curate breathed freely. His alarm was past, nor were the inhabitants of the village without their share of satisfaction. All the boys from four to fourteen were already on his list, and as they paid pretty regularly in produce, his income was just barely sufficient to support him. He looked around for something which at once might enlarge his sphere of action, for Diego began to feel ambitious already, and his eyes at once lighted on the second and fairer half of the creation. He aimed at teaching not only the boys, but the girls. Father Jerome, however, who aimed at keeping him in the village, objected that he was unmarried, and insisted upon his taking a fit partner before he entered upon his new duties. Diego, nothing loth, at once acquiesced. He had not much difficulty in choosing. He was a handsome young fellow, and held the highest rank in the village save the priest, and the greatest landed proprietor, who was never seen. Remena Pedarro was the most lovely unmarried girl in the village. Of perfect Spanish hue and character, she added to the fire of her temperament, a gentleness and meekness of character which rendered her, indeed, a prize for the man who obtained her. After a brief courtship, she agreed to have him, and promised to qualify herself for the arduous duties of assistant in the female department. A week later they were married, and Remena kept her promise. She set herself sedulously to work to study, and being quick and intelligent, made rapid progress. In three months she knew as much as her teacher, and

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