sand dollars.

It is marvellous how sorrow shrinks when
one is very healthy and very much occupied.
Although poverty was her close companion,
Catherine had no thought of it in this prim-
itive manner of living. She had come out
there, with the independence and determi-
nation of a Western woman, for the purpose
of living at the least possible expense, and
making the most she could while the baby
was "getting out of her arms." That process
has its pleasures, which every mother feels
in spite of burdens, and the mind is happily
dulled by nature's merciful provision. With
a little child tugging at the breast, care and
fret vanish, not because of the happiness
so much as because of a certain mammal
complacency, which is not at all intellectual,
but serves its purpose better than the pro-
foundest method of reasoning.

So without any very unbearable misery at
her recent widowhood, this healthy young
woman worked in field and house, cared for
her little ones, milked the two cows out in
the corral, sewed, sang, rode, baked, and
was happy for very wholesomeness. Some-
times she reproached herself that she was
not more miserable, remembering that long