that; it would give me nervous prostration sure! Yet, I know it is
very effective! It was just like some picture you read about, and it
was beautiful, striking, down to the smallest detail. But situations
effective, and details pleasing, are not in my line, and they are
just as much a mystery as improper fractions used to be when I was a
schoolgirl. I hated my school! It was called a "Young Ladies' Seminary."
It was a fashionable, intellectual hot-house, where premature, fleeting
blooms were cultivated regardless of any future consequence. But I
was a barren bush! I never fashion-flowered into a profusion of showy
blossoms. Aunt Patsey said that I did not reap the harvest of my golden
opportunities; but pa, he growled and grumbled a good deal when the
bills came pouring in, but paid them, and roundly swore that he was glad
he had no more fool-daughters to finish off in a fashionable seminary.

I have a keen sense of the ridiculous, and it gets me in trouble all the
time. I don't mean any harm; but I can't help telling a good thing when
I hear it or see it myself. Now that _same_ Calburt Young can't
bear me; he hates me in good fashion because I made fun of his doleful
air, and said that he had the looks and the manners of a man who had, in
a desperate mood, shot down his sweetheart, concealed the fact, and was
suffering the pangs of deep remorse for the dreadful deed. He heard
about it and got angry! He _does_ look awful gloomy! He says I am
crude, _very_ crude, and put people on edge; and that I am so
good-natured, so good-humored all the time that it reduces less
fortunate people into a state of most desperate defiance--defiance
against my everlasting flow of animal spirits, unchecked by any thing.
He told all that to Sophia Gilder, and Sophia is my bosom-friend; so she
told me! Aunt Patsey has a great admiration for her mother, Mrs. John
Robert Gilder, but says that Sophia, poor girl, is a milk-sop--weak,
weak! and taps her shining forehead knowingly. Auntie has a most