either of them, and that possibly we had better spend our time in
studying the plays.

At the second meeting of our society which Mrs. Jameson attended she
gave us a lecture, which she had written and delivered before her
Shakespeare club in the city. It was upon the modern drama, and we
thought it must be very instructive, only as few of us ever went to
the theatre, or even knew the name of a modern playwright, it was
almost like a lecture in an unknown tongue. Mrs. Ketchum went to
sleep and snored, and told me on the way home that she did not mean
to be ungrateful, but she could not help feeling that it would have
been as improving for her to stay at home and read a new
Sunday-school book that she was interested in.

Mrs. Jameson did not confine herself in her efforts for our
improvement to our diet and our literary tastes. After she had us
fairly started in our bewildering career on the tracks of Bacon and
Shakespeare--doing a sort of amateur detective work in the tombs, as
it were--and after she had induced the storekeeper to lay in a supply
of health food--which he finally fed to the chickens--she turned
her attention to our costumes. She begged us to cut off our gowns
at least three inches around the bottoms, for wear when engaged
in domestic pursuits, and she tried to induce mothers to take off
the shoes and stockings of their small children, and let them run
barefoot. Children of a larger growth in our village quite generally
go barefoot in the summer, but the little ones are always, as a rule,
well shod. Mrs. Jameson said that it was much better for them also
to go without shoes and stockings, and Louisa and I were inclined
to think she might be right--it does seem to be the natural way of
things. But people rather resented her catching their children on the