are nine hundred known languages.  Mr. Holmes can write a letter in five languages and I reverence him, but what is that where there are, according to Max Mueller, eight hundred and ninety-five that he does not know a word of?  Mr. Holmes stands still and puts his hands in front of him (where they were meant to be), and says he will tell us about Tradition to-morrow night, as he must go up to his den and write letters.  But he does say Pandora’s box is the story of the temptation and the fall.  You know she opened her box out of curiosity, and diseases and wars leaped out to curse mankind.  That is a Greek story.  The Greek myths all seem to mean something.  Father says:  ’Thank you for a pleasant evening,’ as Mr. Holmes takes his lamp to leave us, and he says:  ‘You forget what I have to thank you all for.’

“My heart bursts with gratitude to him, sometimes; I have his books and I have him; he is always ready so gently and wisely to teach and explain and never thinks my questions silly, and Morris says he has been and is his continual inspiration.  And we are only two out of the many whom he stimulates.  He says we are his recreation.  Dull scholars are his hard work.  Morris is never dull, but I can’t do anything with geometry; he outstripped me long ago.  He teaches me and I do the best I can.  He has written on his slate, ‘Will you play crambo?’ Crambo was known in the time of Addison, so you must know that it is a very distinguished game.  Just as I am about to say ‘I will as soon as this page is finished,’ father yawns and looks up at the clock.  Mother remarks:  ’It is time for worship, one of the children will read, father.’  So while father goes to the door to look out to see what kind of a night it is and predict to-morrow and while mother closes her book with a lingering, loving sigh, and Morris pushes his books away and opens the Bible, I’ll finish my last page.  And, lo, it is finished and you are glad that stupidity and dullness do sometime come to an abrupt end.

“FRIEND MARJORIE.”

* * * * *

“In the Schoolroom, Jan. 23, 18—.

“MY BLESSED MOTHER: 

“Your last note is in my breast pocket with all the other best things from you.  What would boys do without a breast pocket, I wonder.  There is a feeling of study in the very air, the algebra class are ‘up’ and doing finely.  The boy in my seat is writing a note to a girl just across from us, and the next thing he will put it in a book and ask, with an unconcerned face, ‘Mr. Holmes, may I hand my arithmetic to somebody?’ And Mr. Holmes, having been a fifteen-year-old boy himself, will wink at any previous knowledge of such connivings, and say ‘Yes,’ as innocently!  It isn’t against the rules to do it, for Mr. Holmes, never, for a moment, supposes such a rule a necessity.  But I never do it.  Because Marjorie doesn’t come to school.  And a pencil is slow for all I want to say to her.  She is my