I have said that Bel Bree was a born reformer and a born poet; and that the two things go together.  To see freshly and clearly,—­to discern new meaning in old living,—­living as old as the world is; to find by instinct new and better ways of doing, the finding of which is often only returning to the heart and simplicity of the old living before it was old with social circumventions and needed to be fresh interpreted; these are the very heavenly gift and office of illumination and leadership.  Just as she had been made, and just where she had been put,—­a girl with the questions of woman-life before her in these days of restless asking and uncertain reply,—­with her lot cast here, in this very crowding, fermenting, aspiring, great New England metropolis, in the hour of its most changeful and involved experience,—­she brought the divine talisman of her nature to bear upon the nearest, most practical point of the wide tangle with which it came in contact.  And around her in this right place that she had found and taken, gathered and wrought already, by effluence and influence, forces and results that gather and work about any nucleus of life, however deep hidden it may be in a surrounding deadness.  All things,—­creation itself,—­as Asenath had said, must begin in spots; and she and Bel Bree had begun a fair new spot, in which was a vitality that tends to organic completeness, to full establishment, and triumphant growth.

Upon Bel herself reflected quickly and surely the beneficent action of this life.  She was taking in truly, at every pore.  How long would it have been before, out of the hard coarse limits in which her one line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to breathe and abide in?  To help make also; to stand at its practical mainspring, and keep it possible that it should move on.

The talk, the ideas of the day, were in her ears; the books, the periodicals of the day were at hand, and free for her to avail herself of.  The very fun at Mrs, Scherman’s tea-table was the sort of fun that can only sparkle out of culture.  There was a grace that her aptness caught, and that was making a lady of her.

“I’ll give in,” said Elise Mokey, “that you’re getting style; though I can’t tell how it is either.  It ain’t in your calico dresses, nor the doing up of your hair.”

Perhaps it was a good deal in the very simplifying of these from the exaggerated imitations of the shop and street, as well as in the tone of all the rest with which these inevitably fell into harmony.

But I want to tell you about Bel’s kitchen Crambo.  I want to show you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the quietest background of homely use.

She brought out pencil and paper, and made Kate write question slips and detached words.