“Nothing in particular, I assure you,” returned Mrs. Walters.  “I came gradually to perceive the necessity there was that some one should take personal and decisive action in those things that it was so customary to neglect.  Fond as men are of money, it was far easier to reach their purses than their minds.  Our public charities were quite well endowed, but no one gave them that attention that they needed, and thus evils had crept in that were of the highest importance.  My attention was attracted to it in my own vicinity at first; and others saw it as well as I, but it was so much of everybody’s business that everybody let it alone.  I followed the example for awhile, but it seemed as much my duty to act as that of any other person; and though it is little I have done, I think that, in that little, I have filled the place designed for me by Providence.”

“Well, really, Mrs. Walters, you were one of the last persons I should have imagined to be nicely balancing a point of duty, or searching out the place designed for them by Providence.  I must confess myself at fault in my judgment of character for once.”

“Indeed, madam,” replied Mrs. Walters, “I have no doubt you judged me very correctly at the time you knew me.  My first ideas of the duties and responsibilities of life were aroused by Margaret Winne; and I recollect that my intimacy with her commenced after you left the country.”

“Margaret Winne?  Who was she?  Not the wife of that little Dr. Winne we used to hear of occasionally?  They attended the same church with us, I believe?”

“Yes; she was the one.  We grew up together, and were familiar with each other’s faces from childhood; but this was about all.  She was always in humble circumstances, as I had myself been in early life; and, after my marriage, I used positively to dislike her, and to dread meeting her, for she was the only one of my former acquaintances who met me on the same terms as she had always done.  I thought she wished to remind me that we were once equals in station; but I learned, when I came to know her well, how far she was above so mean a thought.  I hardly know how I came first to appreciate her, but we were occasionally thrown in contact, and her sentiments were so beautiful—­so much above the common stamp—­that I could not fail to be attracted by her.  She was a noble woman.  The world knows few like her.  So modest and retiring—­with an earnest desire to do all the good in the world of which she was capable, but with no ambition to shine.  Well fitted as she was, to be an ornament in any station of society, she seemed perfectly content to be the idol of her own family, and known to few besides.  There were few subjects on which she had not thought, and her clear perceptions went at once to the bottom of a subject, so that she solved simply many a question on which astute philosophers had found themselves at fault.  I came at last to regard her opinion almost as an oracle.  I have