glad--when at last the announcement is made, that an ayah wants to go
back to India with a family.

And in India once more, what then? Why then, the great ocean is
between her and her fledged nurslings, and she looks round for some
new objects of love and devotion. These she probably finds in another
home, another mistress, another bâbâ; her heart begins its course
anew; and the ayah lives a second life in the young lives of her
children. No joyless existence is hers, no cares without ample
compensations; but yet when I see in my own country one of these
solitary, strangely-attired, dark-skinned women, I feel attracted
towards her by an almost tearful sympathy, and have ever a kind look
and a warm, gentle word for the poor ayah.


FOOTNOTES:

[3] The red sandal-wood is more rare and valuable than the yellow.




SMALL INVESTMENTS.


The investment of small savings in land with a view to
spade-husbandry, was a few years ago brought prominently before the
working-classes. We took occasion, at the time, to warn the humbler
classes generally against projects of this kind, but without any
beneficial effect. Land-schemes, as they were called, were puffed into