golden-rod the national flower. As the founder and president of the
Benham Institute, she felt that she had found an avocation peculiarly
adapted to her capacities, and she was already actively in
correspondence with clubs of a similar character in other cities, in the
hope of forming a national organization for mutual enlightenment and
support.

Mrs. Earle received Selma by invitation at her lodgings the following
day, and so quickly did their friendship ripen that at the end of two
hours each had told the other everything. Selma was prone instinctively
to regard as aristocratic and un-American any limitations to confidence.
The evident disposition on the part of Mrs. Earle to expose promptly and
without reserve the facts of her past and her plans for the future
seemed to Selma typical of an interesting character, and she was
thankful to make a clean breast in her turn as far as was possible. Mrs.
Earle's domestic experience had been thorny.

"I had a home once, too," she said, "a happy home, I thought. My husband
said he loved me. But almost from the first we had trouble. It went on
so from month to month, and finally we agreed to part. He objected, my
dear, to my living my own life. He didn't like me to take an interest in
things outside the house--public matters. I was elected on the
school-board--the only woman--and he ought to have been proud. He said
he was, at first, but he was too fond of declaring that a woman's place
is in her kitchen. One day I said to him, 'Ellery, this can't go on. If
we can't agree we'd better separate. A cat-and-dog life is no life at
all.' He answered back, 'I'm not asking you to leave me, but if you're
set on it don't let me hinder you, Margaret. You don't need a man to
support you. You're as good as a man yourself.' He meant that to be
sarcastic, I suppose. 'Yes,' said I, 'thank God, I think I can take care