study of them at once, they being eminently calculated for the
widening of our spheres.

Flora Clark, who is the president of the society; Mrs. Peter Jones,
who is the vice-president; Louisa, and I, who am the treasurer,
though there is nothing whatever to treasure, held a council over the
books. We all agreed that while we were interested in them ourselves,
though they were a strange savor to our mental palates, yet we would
not read Mrs. Jameson's letter concerning them to the society, nor
advise the study of them.

"I, for one, don't like to take the responsibility of giving the
women of this village such reading," said Flora Clark. "It may be
improving and widening, and it certainly is interesting, and there
are fine things in it, but it does not seem to me that it would be
wise to take it into the society when I consider some of the members.
I would just as soon think of asking them to tea and giving them
nothing but olives and Russian caviare, which, I understand, hardly
anybody likes at first. I never tasted them myself. We know what
the favorite diet of this village is; and as long as we can eat it
ourselves it seems to me it is safer than to try something which
we may like and everybody else starve on, and I guess we haven't
exhausted some of the older, simpler things, and that there is some
nourishment to be gotten out of them yet for all of us. It is better
for us all to eat bread and butter and pie than for two or three of
us to eat the olives and caviare, and the rest to have to sit gnawing
their forks and spoons."

Mrs. Peter Jones, who is sometimes thought of for the president
instead of Flora, bridled a little. "I suppose you think that these