fire, the round table under the chandelier, with Miss Prudence writing letters and I always writing, studying, or mending.  Sometimes we do not speak for an hour.  Now my study hours are over and I’ve eaten three Graham wafers to sustain my sinking spirits while I try to fill this sheet.  Somehow I can think of enough to say—­how I would talk to you if you were in that little rocker over in the corner.  But I think you would move it nearer, and you would want to do some of the talking yourself.  I haven’t distinguished myself in anything, I have not taken one prize, my composition has never once been marked T. B. R, to be read; to be read aloud, that is; and I have never done anything but to try to be perfect in every recitation and to be ladylike in deportment.  I am always asked to sing, but any bird can sing.  I was discouraged last night and had a crying time down here on the rug before the grate.  Miss Prudence had gone to hear Wendell Phillips, with one of the boarders, so I had a good long time to cry my cry out all by myself.  But it was not all out when she came, I was still floating around in my own briny drops, so, of course, she would know the cause of the small rain storm I was drenched in, and I had to stammer out that—­I—­hadn’t—­improved—­my time and—­I knew she was ashamed of me—­and sorry she—­had tried to—­make anything out of me.  And then she laughed.  You never heard her laugh like that—­nor any one else.  I began to laugh as hard as I had been crying.  And, after that, we talked till midnight.  She said lovely things.  I wish I knew how to write them, but if you want to hear them just have a crying time and she will say them all to you.  Only you can never get discouraged.  She began by asking somewhat severely:  ‘Whose life do you want to live?’ And I was frightened and said, ‘My own, of course,’ that I wouldn’t be anybody else for anything, not even Helen Rheid, or you.  And she said that my training had been the best thing for my own life, that I had fulfilled all her expectations (not gone beyond them), and she knew just what I could do and could not do when she brought me here.  She had educated me to be a good wife to Will, and an influence for good in my little sphere in my down-east home; she knew I would not be anything wonderful, but she had tried to help me make the most of myself and she was satisfied that I had done it.  I had education enough to know that I am an ignorant thing (she didn’t say thing, however), and I had common sense and a loving heart.  I was not to go out into the world as a bread-winner or ‘on a mission,’ but I was to stay home and make a home for a good man, and to make it such a sweet, lovely home that it was to be like a little heaven. (And then I had to put my head down and cry again.) So it ended, and I felt better and got up early to write it all to Will.—­There’s a knock at the door and a message for Miss Prudence.

“Later.  The message was that Helen Rheid is very sick and wants her to come to sit up with her to-night.  Hollis brought the word but would not come upstairs.  And now I must read my chapter in the Bible and prepare to retire.  Poor Helen!  She was here last week one evening with Hollis, as beautiful as a picture and so full of life.  She was full of plans.  She and Miss Prudence are always doing something together.