and during all this exposure by day and by night, they were unable to change their clothes. It is not to be wondered at, that these last few days of their journey broke many of the sisters down, and that they arrived at New Orleans having among their number several suffering invalids. The Ursuline Convent was not ready for their reception, and indeed, was not finished for several years after; but the Company had secured the house which Bienville had built for himself, and there the Ursulines were lodged, until their convent should be built. They were at once ready for work, and that part of their work which related to instruction was ready for them. Their seclusion was so complete, that they saw but little of New Orleans itself, and knew but little of its inhabitants. Nine months after their arrival, Madelaine Hachard wrote her father: "Our city is very pretty, well-built, regularly laid out, so far as I know, and as it seemed to me the day that we arrived, for since that day we have remained in seclusion." The inhabitants were proud of the place, and claimed that, in appearance, it rivaled Paris, but this opinion was not endorsed by the nuns so recently from that metropolis. There was as much display and politeness as in France. Women cared but little for what concerned their salvation, but were alive to what affected their vanity. Velvets, damasks, and ribbons were common, although their cost was three times the price in France. Rouge and patches were used there as elsewhere. The market furnished an abundance of fruits and vegetables. Hunters brought in from the forests and prairies, deer and bears and buffaloes, ducks and wild turkeys, partridges and quail. Fishermen furnished a large variety of excellent fish, most of which were new to the Ursulines. In short, after the trials of the voyage, a great variety of nourishing food was always at their command when the fasts of the Church permitted them to enjoy it; but from much of it they abstained for fear of becoming fastidious. Their Reverend Father was full of zeal, but the work that he had to accomplish staggered these gentle Christians; for the place was full of "debauchery, bad faith, and all the other vices." In their own special work, they were shocked at the moral condition of the young girls, whom it was the custom to marry at the age of twelve or fourteen years, when they did not even know how many Gods there were. Raised in the country, five or six leagues from the city, some of their scholars had never been confessed, had never been at mass, had never heard God spoken of. The ground was fallow which they had undertaken to work, and, as the time approached for Madelaine Hachard's profession, we can appreciate the sincerity with which she says: "I cannot tell you the pleasure I shall take in pronouncing my vows in a foregin land, where Christianity is almost unknown." This glimpse at the condition of New Orleans, as it appeared to the French Ursulines, in the Spring of 1728, which has just been brought before our eyes, is taken from the last of the letters of Madelaine Hachard in the little collection which has furnished the material for this article. While the whole atmosphere of the letter is filled with the same sweetness, and tender, respectful affection for her parents which characterized her farewell letter from France, she is not appalled at the magnitude of the work which has been revealed to her; but the further she advances, the more she thanks the Lord for having chosen her for so holy a vocation. Andrew McFarland Davis. I. FOR MONEY. It is undeniable that the golden calf is the sole idol of the nineteenth century. In the vanishing of our ideals, we cling frantic ally to something tangible, and money has become our standard and our God. We forgive insults to honor and family for money damages; we go to war because we hold bonds; we worship the money getters and despise the money losers, for the man that makes money is good, but the man that keeps it is better. A heart sickness for our lost ideals may rise feebly, sometimes; then we drug it with gold, and the troublesome pang is stilled. The poor we have always with us, and they are divided into two great classes: those who deify a man with money, for the love of it; and those to whom a rich man is a devil, for the hate of it, which is the love of it turned wrong side out, because gold has passed them by. Let Plutus come wooing, and they would not repulse. the Church was with her apparently greater than the necessity of acknowledging the Head of that church. She The thing in life that she lived for and worshiped, was her eldest child, Louise. Louise's beauty, her eyes, her hands, her playing, her cleverness, were held up before the other children with such judiciousness and sincerity that they fell into line, and with all their hearts adored their sister. took all their incense very sweetly, though as a matter of course; and the one thin.; that kept her unselfish was the intensity of her devotion to her sister Frances, two years younger than herself, and suffering since early childhood with a painful form of heartdisease. The two eldest boys, Gilbert and Harry, young men now, had left their small employments at the East when their father was called to California, and for three months of their stay had as yet, contrary to their too sanguine expectations, found nothing in place of them. About this time, Gilbert, who had a lively imagination and a taste for scribbling, began to drift into newspaper work, and finding the life exciting and the work regularly paid for, announced in the course of a few weeks that he had accepted a regular position on one of the city dailies. "My son," exclaimed his father, "rather than have you do such a thing, I —” "Gilbert, how could you without consulting us!" interupted his step-mother, coming to her husband's relief, as she saw him floundering for an alternative. Mrs. Lennard belonged to the latter class. She was the faded, overworked, overstrung wife of the Episcopal clergyman in the little town with the soft Spanish saint's name, across the water from the city. As the second wife, she had tried to do her duty to the two boys and the baby girl left by her predecessor; but when six of her own, of whom two scarcely lived to see the light, successively appeared to keep them company, her overtaxed nerves frequently gave way, and she sought to give them relief by railing at those to whom it was not a matter nearly of life and death that Frances' dress should be too worn out to make over for Julia or Susy. Being a clergyman's wife, she held, as often is the case, to the uttermost letter of her form of church government; but the vital principles of her faith did not seem to afford her much satisfaction or consolation, and the "And you can run to fires, and have all necessity of acknowledging the authority of the theater tickets you want!" exclaimed "You needn't be distressed, mother," he answered gayly. Gilbert was never long cast down, and at present was elated with his success. "I'm very proud of it myself. All the Harvard fellows go into journalism. It's a grand profession, and it is to be the coming one." Louise, with a sigh of envy and congratulation mixed. The theater was Louise's heaven. She had gone once, when a friend of her mother's had invited her to spend a few days in New York, though the fact had caused much severe criticism of her father by the inhabitants of the little Eastern village where he was preaching at the time. Gilbert laughed, and kissed her. He knew that whatever his father's feeling might be, Mrs. Lennard was undeniably relieved that he was, after a fashion, provided for. "With two of us gone, you will have more room and more money, mother,” he added, still with a laugh; though his remark was seriously meant, for Mrs Lennard, just though she tried to be, had made him feel sometimes that the three elders were de trop, a state of things to which he and his brother were quite sensitive in their enforced idle ness. doctor; and he thought he had never seen a more charming picture than the pretty figure, the shining roll of hair under the little straw bonnet, and the curve of cheek and chin, of which he caught an occasional glimpse during the prayers. To every woman in the congregation her dress proclaimed aloud its cheap material, and her bonnet was hopelessly home-made; but Dr. Jack, as he was popularly called, decided that she was rather out of the common way, though Louise, the beauty, let her wonderful eyes rest on him as they went out. He was not bad at all to look at; a little undersized, perhaps, with a good figure and a well developed chest, a finely cut, intelligent face, and alert movements. His father was an old man, and had given up most of his practice into Dr. Jack's hands. On this particular morning, though he was nothing of a church-goer, he had accompanied his Mrs. Lennard and Rose both blushed, mother to hear the new minister. He might though for different reasons. "Your father's heart and purse are always open and welcome to you, Gilbert, and my big boy must not lay up too seriously against his mother what she says when she is tired and worried," said Mrs. Lennard, so gently that Gilbert felt slightly ashamed. "I am only afraid my marriage will make a difference in the family income the wrong way," said Rose, eagerly. "Don't you fret," said her step-mother, cheerfully. "Louise will take your place." For Rose, with an independence of character worthy of Gilbert's sister, had on her arrival canvassed the village well, both the permanent residents and the summer boarders, and had started a flourishing little school, which added not inconsiderably to the gaping household treasury. She was proud of her success, though she knew that the number of her pupils would dwindle away pitifully when the autumn should send the city people back to their homes. But beside this success, she had made another in the legitimate feminine fashion. On the first Sunday after their arrival she and the children had sat just in front of Dr. Jack Percy, the son and partner of the village never have thought of Rose again, if he had not happened to be at home when she called on his mother one afternoon, and on a nearer acquaintance he found that she lived up to her bright ways and sunny eyes. Mrs. Lennard, on the occasions of his frequent visits, decided of course that Louise was the attraction, and Louise accepted the implication without any undue fluttering. It fell to her naturally to receive him, as her mother was often busy and Rose was not unfrequently detained at her school; that is, when he was able through absence of professional duties to call in the afternoon. He often came in the evening, when Rose and her mother were free; but neither Mrs. Lennard nor Louise were aware how often Dr. Jack met the pretty teacher opportunely on her way home from school, nor how many walks began to make the woods beyond the village enchanted ground. Rose fel that it was not quite right for her to be silent about more than three-fourths of these walks and meetings, but as time went on it became a difficult thing for her to speak of him at all. She listened with eager interest to others when his name was mentioned, and it was rapidly becoming a household word; she often turned the conversation so that it would be sure to drift into that channel; but her reticence about him grew so marked that Frances spoke of it one day to Louise. The next time she saw Dr. Jack, Louise came to certain conclusions in her own mind, and adopted a certain winning sisterliness towards him, and a pretty, caressing manner towards Rose, that had its influence in hastening Dr. Jack's destiny by perhaps a week. Mrs. Lennard was surprised and deeply disappointed. Her heart had been set on Louise's marriage, and for Rose to have supplanted her seemed selfish and unsisterly. Dr. Jack was not rich, but he could give his wife certain small comforts such as the Lennards had never dreamed of enjoying. Much to Louise's delight, Rose made a confidant of her, and she learned on good authority in what a Paradise of dainty flattery, idealization, and happy dreams, walks a young girl with a young lover. And Rose and Jack were pretty lovers. He was twenty-eight and she was twenty-three, and they were as delighted with each other and themselves as if two young people had never been engaged before. Indeed, they believed that nobody could appreciate that blissful state as they did, or extract all the finer flavors from an engagement in which nothing was romantic except themselves. It had been arranged that they were to be married in October; it was now early in August, and Louise was to take the school from Rose two weeks before the wedding. Mrs. Lennard expressed a confidence in the experiment that Louise herself was far from feeling, though at the same time the mother resented the necessity of her darling's overworking for the benefit of other mothers' darlings. Still, the girl was anxious to be independent and to help the others. As to Louise's feelings on the subject of Rose's engagement, she never thought that her sister had supplanted her. She had liked Dr. Jack's attentions while she had supposed they were addressed to her, but she did not grudge him to Rose, and it may be doubted whether she was willing to give up her liberty just at present. She looked forward to a time when she, too, should walk in Paradise, and feed on honey-dew, but the time had not come yet. II. GILBERT generally spent his Sundays with his family, and these Sundays were the bright spots in Louise's life. Ever since she could remember, she had chafed at the limitations of her existence, as a clergyman's daughter, and so debarred from certain innocent enjoyments; as living in a country village; as feeling all the inflictions of grinding poverty; knowing besides that her beauty, her brains, her capacity for accomplishments, entitled her to something better than she was ever likely to have. Her mother's credo of fortune-all the poor, people of refinement, taste, and cultivation, but unable to make any impression on account of one fatal lack; all the rich, coarse-minded, thick-skinned, illiterate, yet prized and coveted on the sole account of their fatal abundance-took a deep root in her mind and became an equally devout article of faith with her. But here was Gilbert, a man who enjoyed life in spite of poverty, who was a part of men and things, who, poor himself, wielded power over the rich by virtue of his employment. "They've got to be civil, you know," said Gilbert to the sympathizing Louise, "because we can hurt them more than they can us." On one of these Sunday visits, while talking of people and their doings in the city, he happened to mention that Marion Waring, the banker, had bought the Ripley place. This was a large ranch of several hundred acres, with a beautiful house in the midst of lawn and woodland. It had belonged to an ambitious lawyer with a flourishing practice, and during the building of the house and laying out of the grounds, wise people had shaken their heads, and said Ripley had spent more on architects and solid wood than he could ever get back, not to speak of the original cost of the land, nor the sums he had expended on fancy stock for his dairy, or choice varieties of trees for his orchard. No one was much surprised when, after five years' enjoyment of his folly, Mr. Ripley was stricken with paralysis, from which he did not recover, and the widow was left with two young daughters and the place on her hands. Two or three life insurance policies had been found, but they had all expired some time before; and to make the ranch profitable, a further outlay of money was necessary. It was a difficult place to sell, every one said, manifestly cheering the widow with every repetition; but at last, after having been on the market more than two years, it had been taken by Marion Waring, one of the richest and most influential men in San Francisco. "What did he give for it?" was Mr. Lennard's natural inquiry. "Doesn't his wife like the country?" inquired Frances, again. "He hasn't a wife. The women are crazy to get him to their parties, but he never goes anywhere. He always has a box whenever there is an opera, and he calls on two or three old married ladies without daughters," Gilbert answered. One evening during the next week, Mr. Lennard came home to dinner, announcing that he had met Mr. Waring. "I was at the station when the train came in," he said, with some importance, greatly impressing the younger children thereby, "and Mr. Waring was with the very people I went to meet. He is coming over every night now, and will live here in San Manuel until October or November." "I suppose he didn't trample on your prostrate form," remarked Louise. "You had better call on him, Henry," said his wife, thoughtfully. "I know the men don't go to church much here, but still—” "About one-third of its value, I suppose. Those rich men always take advantage of everything, because they can," said Mrs. Lennard, in a matter-of-fact tone, through which some bitterness was discernible. "And he will make another fortune out of it, while those poor women that need the money-" "Nobody knows anything about it," said Gilbert. "He refused to make the price public." "Ashamed, I've no doubt," commented ments as a last resource, and was awaiting reMrs. Lennard. "He told me he was coming over here pretty soon to look at it thoroughly, because his impression was that there was too much ground wasted in lawn and flowers, and he could enlarge either the orchard or the wheat land." "What a shame!" cried Louise. it's just like those people. They are satisfied, always want to make more. der they don't live in tents, because don't bring in anything." "But never I wonhouses She glanced at Harry, who sat as far from the others as he could get in the small room. Julia and Susy had received private warnings from the other girls that he was not to be disturbed. Every available means of procuring something to do being apparently exhausted, he had answered some advertise sults in a highly nervous state, that made him an object of terror and commiseration to his sisters. Not long after, Mr. Lennard called on the new land-holder, but found, to his regret, that Mr. Waring had not come over that evening. The next Sunday, Frances and Louise. walked down to the five o'clock train, which was to take Gilbert back to the city. The station was full of the usual Sunday crowd going home and Gilbert suddenly cried, in "And you know him, Gilbert?" asked an eager undertone, to his sisters: There Frances, in some excitement. "Yes, to speak to. He is a big, jolly fellow, anywhere between forty-five and fifty, and what he wants of a great house in the country, all full of stained glass and solid wood, I don't know, and nobody knows." he is theres Waring!" Frances turned with interest, Louise with a show of aughty indifference. A large, powerfully built man, with gray hair, and the slightly obscured outlines of the figure that belong to middle age, stood in the center of |