beneath those many ruffles and that quaint high waist, the fashions of
the day--the same true and loving woman. If her face was pensive as
she turned away, it was because truth and love are, in their essence,
forever young; and it is the hard condition of nature that they cannot
always appear so.



OUR COUSIN THE CURATE.

"Why, let the stricken deer go weep,
The heart ungalled play;
For some must watch while some must sleep;
Thus runs the world away."


Prue and I have very few relations: Prue, especially, says that she
never had any but her parents, and that she has none now but her
children. She often wishes she had some large aunt in the country, who
might come in unexpectedly with bags and bundles, and encamp in our
little house for a whole winter.

"Because you are tired of me, I suppose, Mrs. Prue?" I reply with
dignity, when she alludes to the imaginary large aunt.

"You could take aunt to the opera, you know, and walk with her on
Sundays," says Prue, as she knits and calmly looks me in the face,
without recognizing my observation.

Then I tell Prue in the plainest possible manner that, if her large