market-place; yet I dare to call them voices of God,--all!

My reason for choosing this story to tell you is simple enough.

An old book, which I happened to find to-day, recalled it. It
was a ledger, iron-bound, with the name of the firm on the
outside,--Knowles & Co. You may have heard of the firm: they
were large woollen manufacturers: supplied the home market in
Indiana for several years. This ledger, you see by the writing,
has been kept by a woman. That is not unusual in Western trading
towns, especially in factories where the operatives are chiefly
women. In such establishments, they can fill every post
successfully, but that of overseer: they are too hard with the
hands for that.

The writing here is curious: concise, square, not flowing,--very
legible, however, exactly suited to its purpose. People who
profess to read character in chirography would decipher but
little from these cramped, quiet lines. Only this, probably:
that the woman, whoever she was, had not the usual fancy of her
sex for dramatizing her soul in her writing, her dress, her
face,--kept it locked up instead, intact; that her words and
looks, like her writing, were most likely simple, mere absorbents
by which she drew what she needed of the outer world to her, not
flaunting helps to fling herself, or the tragedy or comedy that
lay within, before careless passers-by. The first page has the
date, in red letters, October 2, 1860, largely and clearly
written. I am sure the woman's hand trembled a little when she
took up the pen; but there is no sign of it here; for it was a
new, desperate adventure to her, and she was young, with no faith