of its almost involuntary and hereditary association with a race of bond-servants.  He is superficial indeed in his estimate of character who thinks that people can change their views and feelings in response to a brief demonstration of the essential dignity of labor, especially after generations of accumulating pride of caste have been giving the mind a different bent.  Moreover, this family of Southern origin had not seen in the city of New York very much confirmation of the boasted Northern ideas of labor.  Social status depended too much on the number of servants that people kept and the style in which they lived.  Poverty had brought them a more sudden and complete loss of recognition than would have been possible in the South—­a loss which they would not have felt so greatly had they wealthy connections in town through whom they might have retained, in part at least, their old relations with people of their own station.

As it was, they found themselves almost wholly isolated.  Mrs. Jocelyn did not regret this so much for herself, since her family was about all the society she craved; moreover in her girlhood she had been accustomed to rather remote plantation life, with its long intervals of absence of society.  Mr. Jocelyn’s business took him out among men even more than he relished, for his secret indulgence predisposed to solitude and quiet.  He was living most of the time in an unreal world, and inevitable contact with his actual life and surroundings brought him increasing distress.

With Belle and Mildred it was different.  At their age society and recreation were as essential as air and light.  Many are exceedingly uncharitable toward working-girls because they are often found in places of resort that are, without doubt, objectionable and dangerous.  The fact is ignored that these places are sought from a natural and entirely wholesome desire for change and enjoyment, which are as needful to physical and moral health as sunlight to a plant.  They forget that these normal cravings of the young in their own families find many and safe means of gratification which are practically denied to the tenement population.  If, instead of harsh judgments, they would provide for the poor places of cheap and innocent resort; if, instead of sighing over innate depravity, they would expend thought and effort in bringing sunshine into the experiences of those whose lives are deeply shadowed by the inevitable circumstances of their lot, they would do far more to exemplify the spirit of Him who has done so much to fill the world with light, flowers, and music.

Mildred began to brood and grow morbid in her monotonous work and seclusion; and irrepressible Belle, to whom shop life was becoming an old, weary story, was looking around for “pastures new.”  Her nature was much too forceful for anything like stagnation.  The world is full of such natures, and we cannot build a dike of “thou shalt nots” around them; for sooner or later they will overleap the barriers, and as likely on the wrong side as on the right.  Those who would save and bless the world can accomplish far more by making safe channels than by building embankments, since almost as many are ruined by undue and unwise repression as by equally unwise and idiotic indulgence.