A Real Lady

One suihhier I was boarding with my family in a farm-house by the sea shore. Uur host was a pitiful ntiser, starving himself, starving bis family, and a fortiori, starving bis boarders. Sick of huuian nature, sick of petty miserable eontentiön, a party of tis startcd out one day m a wagon for a fine beach some miles away to try to forget our woos ia the kind lap of Mother Nature. As we approached the boach we stopped at a farm-house to ask permission to put our horse in the barn. Knocking at the door, it was opened by a niothorly-looking woman of fifty, in spectacles, the glasses of which, however, bc trom hiding, gcemedonly to serve, like varnish on a picture, to bring out the light and wannth of a pair of loving blue oyes undorneath. She gave us tho hoart iest weloome; " Put your horse in the barn ? Certainly ! You'll find plenty of hay there. (Jome out to spend a day by the beach, haveyou? That's right. I do like to seo youug people enjoj thenisclves' Won't you eat your luncheon in our apple orchard, U's sj nico and cool and sliady there y And wouldu't yu like a pan of swect milk to have with it 'i " " Bless your dear, loving heart !" I cried intoraally. " Then the stern neecssities of farm life do not shrivel tind wizen and dryrot all souls, after tho mannor of' old Grimes we are boarding with ! But pefhaps this old lady has trodden a more silken path." I looked round the room. There were milk pans enough to make life one eternal scour. Her dress, too, was trussed up ; her arms were bare, and with that bat _1 ..1 11 11 1 al ïi terca ana callous look about trie elbows whieh betbkdns hard usage. " No children, probably ; that accounts for it." Pretiently a rustling of bed clothes and an incipient wail from a neighboring room. " Ah ! that's your grandchildj I suppose 'i " " NO) that's my baby." I tvas about as ineredúlous as Sarah of oíd ; but she went right on. " I've had sixtoon children ! " Sixteen children, all these milkpans, the ordinary work of the farm-house, and room still in the heart for such a reception as wo had had ! for such a generous " I do like to sec young people enjoying theni8ClTe8 ! " for süch hearty profiera of tho hospitaiity of the apple orchard, and a full gallon of sweet milk I Ah ! I sec it ! " Where there is room in the heart, there is always room in the luu! " - room for all these children, and then room to spare for a bevy of ple&sureseoking, do-nothingstraugerSj Uho would wem sent only to suggest tho complaint : Why must my life be a ceaseless moil of nursing, scrubbing, ripping, sewing, whilo these people can lie on the rocks all day long, counting the breakers, cooled by tho spray, dozing off the music of tho püising ooean I went, after a preliminary embarrassment in the stable over the horscs's collar, and said blushingly, "Madam, I am iishamed to say I do uot know how to harness that horse ! " " Of course not ; everybody can't do everything ! " - and thi in a tone as though she ere already overwhelmed with amazenunt at the number of things I could do - her replying thus, I say, and thpi) runnirlg to the back door and calling to two of her sons in the field : " Here you, Iloury Clay ■ Daniel Webster ! (room still in that heart, wo see, for a strcak of herO worship,) come hero and help this gentleman hamess his horse ! " Bt I cannot enlarge further. Does not she, however, illustraie glorioüsly the Creative power of a large heart - creative power to make a small house big, narrow means abundant, work i)lay, a contracted