to take part in, the members of the family withdrew to their own
apartments, and the guests were left free to fill up the time till
dinner as they chose. With books, papers, and visits from room to room,
or strolls about the grounds, the hours never lagged; and much as one
day seemed like another, there was always something of its own to
remember it by. Of course, this regularity was not the result of
chance. Behind the visible curtain was the invisible spirit guiding
and directing all. It was no easy task to provide abundantly, and yet
judiciously, for a family always large, but which might at any moment
be almost doubled without an hour's notice. The farm, as I have already
said, furnished a full proportion of the daily supplies, and the General
was the farmer. But the daily task of distribution and arrangement fell
to the young ladies, each of whom took her week of housekeeping in turn.
The very first morning I was admitted behind the scenes. "If you want
anything before breakfast," said one of the young ladies, as the evening
circle was breaking up, "come down into the butler's room and get it."
And to the butler's room I went; and there, in a calico fitted as neatly
as the rich silk of the evening before, with no papers in her hair, with
nothing but a richer glow to distinguish the morning from the evening
face, with laughing eyes and busy hands, issuing orders and inspecting
dishes, stood the very girl with whom I was to begin at nine my
initiation into the mysteries of French. There must have been something
peculiar in the grass which the cows fed on at La Grange; for I used to
go regularly every morning for my cup of milk, and it never disagreed
with me.


MY FRENCH.