and gaining new strength and courage to face life's struggle.

At night there were more men, poor, weary fellows with drawn, tired faces and aching limbs, to whom this park was a very gift from God. Sometimes when the weather was too stifling to sleep indoors, they stayed on the grass or benches all night.

Scarce a week had passed after the park was opened, before the dwellers began to notice a change in themselves and in their children, and their hearts were full of thanks to the kind old gentleman who had brought into their dreary, comfortless lives this blessed ray of sunshine. Mary and John had never been so happy. Their tenement facing on the park, they got the full benefit of it, and their little ones, from continually breathing pure air and having a good open place on which to run and play, began to grow rosy and lively as children should be. Little Alice, too, lost much of her pallor and weakness and had gained in appetite, so that her parents were rid of a good deal of their worry concerning her. With five bodies to clothe and feed, Williams had never been able to set anything aside from his wages, but thanks to steady work and good health he had been able to keep his family in sufficient food and clothing.

"John," said Mary one morning as he was about to set off for his daily toil, "I wish you would let me have a dollar before you go. Little Willie needs shoes and I have also bread to buy for supper."

Williams fished in his pockets. "I'm afraid I haven't got all of that, little woman," he he said, pulling out some change. "Somehow the

money's been going a little faster than usual lately."

"The children's clothes wear out quicker somehow," said Mary, "and they seem to eat more as they grow bigger."

"Guess it's all along o' that blessed park," laughed John good humoredly. "But it's all right. Please God we'll get the kids enough to eat and to put on, though it's going to be hard scraping, lass, with nothing to spare. But thank God we're living now, Mary, thank God we're breathing!"

"Good man," said Mary smiling and patting him on the arm affectionately; and with a kiss she sent him off to his work.

When Williams came home that evening, his wife did not greet him in her usual cheerful manner. He saw at once that something had gone wrong.

"What is it, Mary?" he inquired anxiously.

"The landlord has been here today, John," she answered. "Well, lass?"

"He has-oh, John, it's such bad news! He has raised the rent ten dollars a month."

"Raised the rent!-ten dollars!"

"It's the park," she explained. "The landlord says that on account of the park he can get better prices. He says that he has people ready to come in here and pay him twenty dollars a month. Oh, John, isn't it a shame?" And poor Mary buried her face in her husband's shoulder and sobbed.

John Williams stood like one petrified. The blow was a sudden and a terrible one, a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. He had watched his dear ones grow healthy and happy in their improved surround

and lumps in their throats that almost choked them.

John had before this step taken a turn around the park to see if he could rent some place nearby; but he found that the other landlords like his own had aroused to their opportunity and dozens of his neighbors had been forced out like himself. Some of them were not slow to anathematize the "old fool" who had aimed to be their benefactor.

Their new home the Williamses found in a dismal street about half a mile away. It was perhaps no worse than the old had been, a close, dingy, ill-smelling, sweltering place, but it seemed worse, ten times worse. The blame was still with the park. The fresh air and the green at their door had poisoned their minds against the old life.

His

The first night they spent in their new home, John Williams had a dream. He saw an old, whitehaired man, with a kind, benevolent face, sitting alone in a handsome room with books all around it. head was resting on his hand and he seemed lost in thought. Presently the old man lifted his head and gazed at John, and his look was full of pity. Then his lips moved and John, listening, heard him murmur pathetically: "I did not mean it so, my poor, poor brother! I did not mean it so! It is the curse in the blessing!"

I

the year of grace eighteen hundred and sixty-nine, at the mystic hour when the month of May gave place to June, an immortal soul entered upon its earthly pilgrimage. Its humble environments warranted neither pomp nor ceremony at the outset. Indeed, the parents, only a farmer and his literal helpmeet, would have considered any announcement of the event a shock to modesty. Neighbors were informed. only by accident: through the necessity of calling in the doctor, or by the minister on his periodical visit. Months elapsed before the parish register recorded it, and if the neglect had been permanent no one in their little community would. have thought the baby wronged or the country defrauded.

But if the testimony of the nurse is to be credited, the party chiefly interested did not accept the situation meekly. In a confidential chat with a crony over a cup of tea she impressively declared:-"From the very first moment that baby drew breath she set up such a yell as never was, and she's kept it up most ever since. She eats well, so there can't be no reason for it, and her eyes are blue, and her complexion blondă as the French say - SO there can't be no sense in it. We expect temper in black eyes, but from its looks this child ought to be an hangel from heaven. But she's

top, Mama!" was her cry, as she scrambled up the steep ascent, undeterred by boulder, bush or brier, her progress similar to that of the frog of mathematical fame in his attempts to scale the well.

As she grew older her playhouses, such as child build of sticks and stones, were made on the hill's summit: her comrades were entertained there, her lessons were conned there, and her flower garden was cultivated there. It did not flourish nearly as well as though protected by sheltering cliff: "I don't care, it ought to do better," she would assert, "everything ought to do better up top, where the sun, and the rain, and the wind come free."

The educational advantages offered by a country district school were not of the highest order even in Massachusetts: but Arabella made rapid progress in all that it could teach, at the same time learning household occupations from her mother and husbandry from her father, indefatigable to get "up top" of all knowledge within her reach. When the day finally came that she could "beat the teacher," she obtained a position to teach, and during the intervals between the summer and winter terms accepted any lucrative occupation that offered,dressmaking, seamstress, nurse, or to do general housework: no matter what, so that it was honest work, and would assist in increasing the sum she was saving to defray the expense of a college education.

Arabella certainly did not inherit her ambition from the present generation of Thompsons. From her mother she learned only contentment according to the instruction of the English catechism: from her father a love of study that, undisciplined, led him to neglect farm

duties, without producing any practical results in an educational direction.

"There is no call for your working out all the time," Mrs. Thompson made complaint. "We can keep you as well as other girls hereabouts are kept, and I'm lonesome. I don't see what good this everlasting study has been to your father, or what good it's likely to be to you."

This was no new topic between mother and daughter, and Arabella had thought out the answer years before. What good? Centuries ago the heathen Greek wrote over his Temple of Science, "Knowledge is Power." Its power could win all there is in life worth having, wealth, influence, fame. Better to be a quadruped, fulfilling the instincts. thereof, than to drag out an existence not one whit nobler, as did the farmers in her vicinity. Toil, toil, toil, until limbs are stiff, back is bent, brain is dazed, to eat and sleep their only capacity of enjoyment. Let the hind do its work, bolt its food to repletion, then sleep the sodden sleep of imbecility!

Intellectual toil Arabella embraced. It was manual labor only that she resolved to escape. At present her ideas were quite vague as to what position she would gain in the world. Wealth, for her, had no more enlarged significance than sufficient to purchase the elegances of life-efficient service, soft raiment, aesthetic surroundings. Nor did she sigh for knowledge with a view thereby to benefit mankind. Her present motive power was simply ambition for her own ad

vancement.

"Why not start up a business that will keep you at home?" advised her father. "You're smart enough. We own the place clear: there's no call