EVERY SATURDAY: A JOURNAL OF CHOICE READING, IBLISHED WEEKLY BY H. O. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY, 219 WASHINGTON STREET, BOSTON: NEW YORK: HURD AND HOUGHTON; ngle Numbers, 10 ets.; Monthly Parts, 50 cts.; Yearly Subscription, $5.00. N. B. THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY and EVERY SATURDAY sent to one address 88.00. MEMORIALS. THE country is beginning to be conscious of a past. anifest Destiny, which was the pass-word to future greatss, is not often spoken now, and the insistence upon the portant fact that the nation's one hundredth birthday is proaching, indicates somewhat the growing disposition the people to recognize existing conditions not only as "ophetic, but as connected with historic facts. Every one aware of the line which the civil war has drawn across e historic page. The events preceding it are removed to historic perspective, and the cares and problems of the resent serve to make that older period of national history rateful to the tired mind. Consider the monuments and statues that are constantly edicated and unveiled. They honor heroes of every eriod of national life. The gathering in the national alls of historic statues, albeit art has sometimes to look he other way, is another expression of this consciousness of a past. The great Memorial Hall at Cambridge, where the ideas of sacrifice and holy purpose keep guard over the lives of students, is a noble testimony to the sense of gratitude toward the nation's defenders, which has become a moving force in American life. The services of Memorial Day, with all the admixture of baser elements, are yet the incense of national homage. Men talk, sometimes, as if it were the part of all good patriots to forget the war for the Union, and only let the right hand remember its cunning; but it is a shallow conceit which would ask any part of the country to bury out of sight the symbols, not of hate, but of consecration. The histories which begin to find their way into our literature, mark the same growth of national life. Distinct epochs come forth more clearly, and proportion is easier discovered. We begin to turn to the histories of our own country with relish. With all our increase of travel and familiarity with the Old World, begetting a wider survey, and easing us of the old Little Pedlington way of regarding our own country and life, there has grown to be a clearer conception of the difference between our estate and that of transatlantic people, and a stronger desire to trace the causes of our own condition. There is a wish to have a rational explanation of our life, by which we may see how we have come to be what we are. The very knowledge of foreign history tends to make us value our own, and seek for the common springs from which both flow. It certainly is much when the facts upon which we ground our philosophy of history may be sought more frequently in our own experience. With the growing interest in our own past, we shall, by degrees, awake to a sense of the value of the material which lies in it for literature. It is possible, to-day, to make a considerable collection of literary productions which owe their existence to some fact in our history; the culture which deals with them has sometimes a foreign tang to it, and the facts themselves thus get treated not always in a large, human way, but in the conventional way of a foreign literature. We shall yet see in our writers a spirit of strong interest in society and manners once existing here, not an archæological interest, but a family interest. But for this there needs to be a common wide-spread interest in the same matters. This we have not heretofore had, and out of it will spring the genius that will suddenly, as Scott did in Scotland, make the dead bones in the valleys to spring into a living host. NOTES. The American Social Science Association will shortly publish, through Hurd and Houghton, New York; The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Number Six of the Journal of Social Science. Besides the address of George William Curtis, the President of the Association, given at the recent meeting in New York, it will contain various papers read at that meeting, which have been revised for publication. Among these are Financial Administration, by Gamaliel Bradford; Ocean Laws for Steamships, by Prof. Benjamin Pierce; the Farmers' Movement in the Western States, by Willard C. Flagg; Rational Principles of Taxation, by David A. Wells; The Reformation of Prisoners, by Z. R. Brockway; The Deaf Mute College at Washington, by E. M. Gallaudet. The number will be uniform in style with previous issues by the Association, and sold at the price of one dollar. - It is good news for Harvard that Prof. James Russell Lowell, coming home with his English laurels, is to resume his connection with the University, although the exact limits of his teaching do not appear as yet to be very well defined. It is simply announced that his class work I will not be routine work. - in The new copyright law, as we understand it, makes it unnecessary to employ the formula on the back of the title-page of each book which has hitherto been used. Instead of declaring in full that this book was "Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1874 by the office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington," it is now sufficient for the owner of the copyright simply to state the fact thus: "Copyright, 1874, by -." We had already got rid of the cumbrous formula which used to look as if a Thanksgiving proclamation were read upon the publication of each book, and this further simplification will be gratefully received. It will help good looks more on pictures than in books, but in books it will give a more tidy appearance. Since there is only one place in the country where copyrights are entered now, it is obviously unnecessary to state the place in the formula. The gradual elimination reminds one of the story of Franklin and the bootmaker who presented an elaborate sign for Franklin's criticism, on which his name and occupation were stated minutely. Franklin criticised everything off the sign save the man's name and the picture of a boot. The copyright act is further amended by requiring a fee of one dollar for recording, instead of two fees, as now, of fity cents each, for recording and giving a copy of record. The act goes into effect August 1st. Such changes as have been made, seem merely to make more exact what was loosely stated in the act. -There is to be a convention of Publishers and Booksellers at Put-in-Bay, the last of this month, to discuss various matters of common interest: among others the rates of discount, and questions springing out of the relation held by the publisher to the retailer and to the customer. We should like to believe that the convention would meet squarely the question of English books and American ones, but we have no expectation that this matter will receive any attention. Will some of the members be good enough to rise and explain what has become of the juvenile book trade of the country? -The question of discounts to persons not in the trade will probably excite as much disturbance as anything. A humorous book-publisher of New York has sent to the Publishers' Weekly a satirical advertisement, announcing that having made no small gains out of his business, he is now prepared to show his gratitude by hereafter selling all books at prime cost, and invites orders from the following classes, whom the judicious reader, if not himself among them, will discover constitute those who usually demand a discount from the trade: Public and private libraries. Descendants of all those once engaged in the book busi ness. Friends and relatives of any bookseller, or booksellers' clerks, living or dead. Landlords of all premises now or once occupied by booksellers. Theological and all other students. Boys now in school who may go to college hereafter. All persons who sing in the choirs of churches, for nothing. Emigrants from foreign lands. Strangers visiting the city on business or pleasure. And to all other persons except Indians not taxed. -- The managers of the Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia have cut down the estimate for buildings to a sum nearly covered by subscriptions. Six millions was the first estimate, but by a severe process of shrinkage the amount now regarded as necessary has been made only a little over two millions. The Philadelphia managers will deserve well of the country if the exhibition is made the exponent of honesty in work, and economy in management. It has, at times, looked very much as if we were to celebrate our hundredth anniversary by showing what a sham and shame we could produce. following: About three dozen knives, forks, and spoon all the butcher knives, three in number, a large carving knife, fork, and steel; several large plugs of tobacco; the outside casing of a silver watch was disposed of in one part of the pile, the glass of the same watch in another and the works in still another; an old purse containing some silver, matches and tobacco; nearly all the small tools from the tool closets, among them several larg augers. Altogether, it was a very curious mixture d different articles, all of which must have been transportal some distance, as they were originally stored in different parts of the house. "The ingenuity and skill displayed in the constructin of this nest and the curious taste for articles of iron, many of them heavy, for component parts, struck me with r prise. The articles of value were I think stolen from the men who had broken into the house for temporary lodg ing. I have preserved a sketch of this iron-clad nest which I think unique in natural history. - In this heated spell our readers may thank us for producing a counter irritation by setting before them per haps the most elaborate of the various ingenious hard sentences which have been the cause of so much mortification in country boarding-houses. It is taken from the Newark Advertiser, and should be written down from dictation. The usefulness of this little task in vacation will be readily seen by all whose children find time hang. ing heavily. "The most skilful gauger I ever knew was a maligned cobbler, armed with a poniard, who drove a pedler's wagon, using a mullein-stalk as an instrument of coercion, to tyrannize over his pony shod with calks. He was a Galilean Sadducee, and he had a phthisicky catarrh diphtheria, and the bilious intermittent erysipelas. Á certain sibyl, with the sobriquet of 'Gypsy,' went into ecstasies of cachinnation at seeing him measure a bushel of peas, and separate saccharine tomatoes from a heap of peeled potatoes, without dyeing or singeing the ignitible queue which he wore, or becoming paralyzed with a hemorrhage. Lifting her eyes to the ceiling of the cupola of the Capitol to conceal her unparalleled embarrassment, making a rough courtesy, and not harassing him with mystifying, rarefying, and stupefying innuendoes, she gave him a conch, a bouquet of lilies, mignonnette, and fuchsias, a treatise on mnemonics, a copy of the Apocrypha in hieroglyphics, daguerreotypes of Mendelssohn and Kos ciusko, a kaleidoscope, a dram-phial of ipecacuanha, a teaspoonful of naphtha, for deleble purposes, a ferrule, a clarionet, some licorice, a surcingle, a carnelian of symmetrical proportions, a chronometer with a movable balance-wheel, a box of dominoes, and a catechism. The gauger, who was also a trafficking rectifier and a parishioner of mine, preferring a woollen surtout (his choice was referable to a vacillating occasionally-occurring idiosyncrasy), wofully uttered this apothegm: Life is chequered; but schism, apostasy, heresy, and villany shall be punished.' The sibyl apologizingly answered: There is a ment it was frequently broken into by tramps who sought ellipsis and a trisyllabic diæresis.' We replied in trochees, ratable and allegeable difference between a conferrable Professor Silliman publishes, in the July number of the American Journal of Science and Art, an interesting extract from a private letter to himself on the habits of the California wood-rat, which seem to be very thievish habits indeed. The writer was partial owner of some property on the Oregon coast, containing a saw-mill which had never been in operation. There was a dwelling-house for the hands, in which, on work being discontinued were stored a quantity of stuff, tools, packing for the engine, six or seven kegs of large spikes; in the closets, knives, forks, spoons, etc. A large cooking stove was left in one of the rooms. "This house," he says, 66 was left uninhabited for two years, and, being at some distance from the little settle stove. a shelter for the night. When I entered this house I was astonished to see an immense rat's nest on the empty On examining this nest, which was about five feet in height, and occupied the whole top of the stove (a large range), I found the outside to be composed entirely of spikes, all laid with symmetry so as to present the points of the nails outward. In the centre of this mass was the nest, composed of finely divided fibres of the hemp packing. Interlaced with the spikes, we found the not impugning her suspicion." - Mr. Thomas R. Gould, the sculptor, who had previ ously given us a statue of the West Wind, has now completed a medallion, if we understand the description, representing the Ghost in Hamlet. The treatment of this subject by a sculptor will at once suggest to many minds how much broader the range of a sculptor is, than appears at first sight. OL. II.] EVERY SATURDAY. A ROSE IN JUNE. CHAPTER XIII. (continued.) A FOURNAL OF CHOICE READING. ROSE went out without a word; she rent and sat down in the little shady ammer-house where Mr. Nolan had aken refuge from the sun and from he mirth of the children. He had aleady seen there was something wrong, and was prepared with his sympathy: whoever was the offender Mr. Nolan was sorry for that one; it was a way se had; his sympathies did not go so much with the immaculate and always virtuous; but he was sorry for whosoever had erred or strayed, and was repenting of the same. Poor Rose he began to feel himself Rose's champion, because he felt sure that it was Rose, young, thoughtless, and inconsiderate, who must be in the wrong. Rose sat down by his side with a heartbroken look in her face, but did not say anything. She began to beat with her fingers on the table as if she were beating time to a march. She was still such a child to him, so young, so much like what he remembered her in pinafores that his heart ached for her. "You are in some little bit of trouble?" he said at last. "Oh, not a little bit," cried Rose, a great, very great trouble!" She was so full of it that she could not talk of anything else. And the feeling in her mind was that she must speak or die. She began to tell her story in the woody arbor with the gay noise of the children close at hand, but hearing a ery among them that Mr. Incledon was coming, started up and tied on her hat, and seizing Mr. Nolan's arm, dragged him out by the garden door. "I cannot see him to-day!" she cried, and led the curate away, dragging him after her to a quiet by-way over the felds in which she thought they would be safe. Rose had no doubt whatever of the full sympathy of this old friend. She was not afraid even of his disapproval. It seemed certain to her that he must pity at least if not help. And to Rose, in her youthful confidence in others, there was nothing in this world which was unalterable of its nature: no trouble, except death, which could not be got rid of by the intervention of friends. It chilled her a little, however, as she went on, to see the curate's face grow longer and longer, graver and SATURDAY, AUGUST 1, 1874. graver. "You should not have done 66 I know I ought not to have done it, but it was not my doing. How could I help myself? And now, oh, now, dear Mr. Nolan, tell me what to Though she will not listen to me she do! Will you speak to mamma? might hear you." "But I don't see what your mamma has to do with it," said the curate. "It is not to her you are engaged nor is it she who has given her word; you must keep your word, we are all bound to do that." "But a great many people don't do it," said Rose, driven to the worst of arguments in sheer despair of her cause. "You must," said Mr. Nolan: "the people who don't are not people to be followed. You have bound yourself and you must stand by it. He is a good man and you must make the best of it. To a great many it would not seem hard at all. You have accepted him, and you must stand by him. I do not see what else can be done now." “Oh, Mr. Nolan, you speak as if I were married, and there was no hope." "It is very much the same thing," said the curate; "you have given your word. Rose, you would not like to be a jilt; you must either keep your word or be called a jilt-and called truly. It is not a pleasant character to have." "But it would not be true!"' "I think it would be true. Mr. for that?" "A great many people care for it, "I care nothing for the advantages," [No. 5. said Rose, "the only one thing was ised to be good to the boys and to for the sake of the others. He promhelp mamma; and now we don't need his help any more." "A good reason, an admirable reason," cried the curate with unwonted sarcasm, "for casting him off now. Few people state it so frankly, but it is the way of the world." Rose gave him a look so full of wondering that the good man's heart was touched. "Come," he said, " 'you had made up your mind to it yesterday. It cannot be so very bad after all. At your age nothing can be very bad, for you can always adapt yourself to what is new. So long as there's nobody else in the way that's more to your mind," he said, turning upon her with a penetrating glance. Rose said nothing in reply. She it, and choking the cry which came to put up her hands to her face, covering her lips. How could she to a man, to youth as was Mr. Nolan, make this last one so far separated from love and confession of all? The curate went away that night with a painful impression on his mind. He did not go to Whitton, as Mrs. future home, but he saw the master of Damerel had promised, to see Rose's it, who, disappointed by the headache with which Rose had retreated to her room, on her return from her walk with the curate, did not show in his best aspect. None of the party indeed did; perhaps the excitement and commotion of the news had produced a bad result for nothing could be evening which followed. Even the flatter or more deadly-lively than the children were cross and peevish, and had to be sent to bed in disgrace; and Rose had hidden herself in her room, and lines of care and irritation were great good fortune which had befallen on Mrs. Damerel's forehead. The them did not, for the moment at least, bring happiness in its train. CHAPTER XIV. night. She had a headache, which is ROSE did not go down-stairs that the prescriptive right of a woman in which Agatha brought her, at the trouble. She took the cup of tea door of her room, and begged that mamma would not trouble to come of She was afraid of another discussion, see her, as she was going to bed and shrank even from seeing any one. She had passed through a great many different moods of mind in respect to Mr. Incledon, but this one was different from all the rest. All the softening of feeling of which she had been conscious died out of her mind; his very name became intolerable to her. That which she had proposed to do, as the last sacrifice a girl could make for her family, an absolute renunciation of self and voluntary martyrdom for them, changed its character altogether when they no longer required it. Why should she do what was worse than death, when the object for which she was willing to die was no longer before her; when there was, indeed, no need for doing it at all? Would Iphigenia have died for her word's sake, had there been no need for her sacrifice? and why should Rose do more than she? In this there was, the reader will perceive, a certain change of sentiment; for though Rose had made up her mind sadly and reluctantly to marry Mr. Incledon, yet she had not thought the alternative worse than death. She had felt while she did it the ennobling sense of having given up her own will to make others happy, and had even recognized the far-off and faint possibility that the happiness which she thus gave to others might, some time or other, rebound upon herself. But the moment her great inducement was removed, a flood of different sentiment came in. She began to hate Mr. Incledon, to feel that he had taken advantage of her circumstances, that her mother had taken advantage of her, that every one had used her as a tool to promote their own purpose, with no more consideration for her than had she been altogether without feeling. This thought went through her mind like a hot breath from a furnace, searing and scorching everything. And now that their purpose was served without her, she must still make this sacrifice for honor! For honor! Perhaps it is true that women hold this motive more lightly than men, though indeed the honor that is involved in a promise of marriage does not seem to influence either sex very deeply in ordinary cases. I am afraid poor Rose did not feel its weight at all. She might be forced to keep her word, but her whole soul revolted against it. She had ceased to be sad and resigned. She was rebellious and indignant, and a hundred wild schemes and notions began to flit through her mind. To jump in such a crisis as this from the tender resignation of a martyr for love into the bitter and painful resistance of a domestic rebel who feels that no one loves her, is easy to the young mind in the unreality which more or less envelops everything to youth. From the one to the other was but a step. Yesterday she had been the centre of all the family plans, the foundation of comfort, the chief object of their thoughts. Now she was in reality only Rose the eldest daughter, who was about to make a brilliant marriage, and therefore was much in the foreground, but no more loved or noticed than any one else. In reality this change had actually come, but she imagined a still greater change; and fancy showed her to herself as the rebellious daughter, the one who had never fully done her duty, never been quite in sympathy with her mother, and whom all would be glad to get rid of, in marriage or any other way, as interfering with the harmony of the house. Such of us as have been young may remember how easy these revolutions of feeling were, and with what quick facility we could identify ourselves as almost adored or almost hated, as the foremost object of everybody's regard or an intruder in everybody's way. Rose passed a very miserable night, and the next day was, I think, more miserable still. Mrs. Damerel did not say a word to her on the subject which filled her thoughts, but told her that she had decided to go to London in the beginning of the next week, to look after the "things' which were necessary. As they were in mourning already, there was no more trouble of that description necessary on Uncle Edward's account, but only new congratulations to receive, which poured in on every side. "I need not go through the form of condoling, for I know you did not have much intercourse with him, poor old gentleman,” one lady said; and another caught Rose by both hands and exclaimed on the good luck of the family in general. 66 Blessings, like troubles, never come alone," she said. "To think you should have a fortune tumbling down upon you on one side, and on the other this chit of a girl carrying off the best match in the country!" "I hope we are sufficiently grateful for all the good things Providence sends us," said Mrs. Damerel, fixing her eyes severely upon Rose. Oh, if she had but had the courage to take up the glove thus thrown down to her! But she was not yet screwed up to that desperate pitch. Mr. Incledon came later, and in his joy at seeing her was more lover-like than he had yet permitted himself to be. 66 Why I have not seen you since this good news came!" he cried, fondly kissing her in his delight and heartiness of congratulation, a thing he had never done before. Rose broke from him and rushed out of the room, white with fright and resent her disregard of other people's feelings, her indifference to her own hotor and pledged word. Once more Rose remained up-stairs, refusing a come down, and the house was aghast at the first quarrel which had ever dis turbed its decorum. Mr. Incledon went away bewildered and unhappy, not knowing whether to believe that this was a mere ebuli tion of temper, such as Rose had never shown before, which would have been a venial offence, rather amusing than otherwise to bis indulgent fond ness; or whether it meant something more, some surging upwards of the old reluctance to accept him, which be had believed himself to have overcome This doubt chilled him to the heart, and gave him much to think of as he took his somewhat dreary walk home - for failure, after there has been an appearance of success, is more dis couraging still than when there has been no opening at all in the clouded skies. And Agatha knocked at Rose's locked door, and bade her good night through the keyhole with a mixture of horror and respect-horror for the wickedness, yet veneration for the courage which could venture thus to beard all constituted authorities. Mrs. Damerel herself said no good night to the rebel. She passed Rose's door steadily without allowing herself to be led away by the impulse which tugged at her heart to go in and give the kiss of grace, notwithstanding the impenitent condition of the offender. Had the mother done this, I think all that followed might have been averted, and that Mrs. Damerel would have been able eventually to carry out her programme and arrange the girl's life as she wished. But she thought it right to show her displeasure, though her heart almost failed her. Rose had shut herself up in wild misery and passion. She had declared to herself that she wanted to see no one; that she would not open her door, nor subject herself over again to such reproaches as had been poured upon her. But yet when she heard her mother pass without even a word, all the springs of the girl's being seemed to stand still. She could not believe it. Never before in allher life had such a terrible occurrence taken place. Last night, when she had gone to bed to escape remark, Mrs. Damerel had come in ere she went to her own room and asked after the pretended headache, and kissed her, and bade her keep quite still and be better to-morrow. Rose got up from where she was sitting, expecting her mother's appeal and intending to resist, and went to the door and put her ear against it and listened. All was quiet. Mrs. Damerel had gone steadily along the corridor, had entered the rooms of the other children, and now shut her own doorsure signal that the day was over. When this inexorable sound met her ears, Rose crept back again her seat and wept bitterly, with an aching and vacancy n her heart which it is beyond words to tell. It seemed o her that she was abandoned, cut off from the family love, hrown aside like a waif and stray, and that things would ever be again as they had been. This terrible conclusion lways comes in to aggravate the miseries of girls and boys. Things could never mend, never again be as they had been. She cried till she exhausted herself, till her head ached in lire reality, and she was sick and faint with misery and the sense of desolation; and then wild schemes and fancies came into her mind. She could not bear it scarcely for hose dark helpless hours of the night could she bear itout must be still till daylight; then, poor forlorn child, cast off by every one, abandoned even by her mother, with no hope before her but this marriage, which she hated, and ro prospect but wretchedness-then she made up her mind she would go away. She took out her little purse and found a few shillings in it, sufficient to carry her to the refuge which she had suddenly thought of. I think she would have liked to fly out of sight and ken and hide herself forever, or at least until all who had been unkind to her had broken their hearts about her, as she had read in novels of unhappy heroines doing. But she was too timid to take such a daring step, and she had no money, except the ten shillings in her poor little pretty purse, which was not meant to hold much. When she had made up her mind, as she thought, or to speak more truly, when she had been quite taken possession of by this wild purpose, she put a few necessaries into a bag to be ready for her flight, taking her little prayer-book last of all, which she kissed and cried over with a heart wrung with many pangs. Her father had given it her on the day she was nineteen not a year since. Ah, why was not she with him, who always understood her, or why was not he here? He would never have driven her to such a step as this. He was kind, whatever any one might say of him. If he neglected some things, he was never hard upon any one at least, never hard upon Rose - and he would have understood her now. With an anguish of sudden sorrow, mingled with all the previous misery in her heart, she kissed the little book and put it into her bag. Poor child! it was well for her that her imagination had that sad asylum at least to take refuge in, and that the rector had not lived long enough to show how hard in worldliness a soft and self-indulgent man can be. (To be continued.) HIS TWO WIVES.1 BY MARY CLEMMER AMES. - CHAPTER XVIII. THE AMBASSADORS' BALL. AGNES waked with a dull consciousness that some heavy ill had befallen her. In the first gray light of the wintry morning they confronted her the words which she heard another woman utter but the day before concerning herself as a woman and wife. Now, as she sat smoothing Vida's bright locks and looking into the asking eyes of little Cyril, she planned her coming course of action. "Take a high ground and maintain it, my dear," her friend Mrs. Twilight used to say, when giving her advice in any girlish trouble, and Agnes gave a weary little sigh as she mentally measured the height of the ground to which she must now attain, or be crushed under the triumphal chariot of her enemy. "I have not her beauty, but I am your mother," she said, kissing each child. "I am his wife. He will not, he cannot forget that long enough to turn to one who would allure him to dishonor. She despises me. She Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by H. O. HOUGHrex & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. She thinks I am incapable of appreciating his career. shall see. I will use my new strength for him alone. I will practice my music. I will keep up with him in my information of public affairs. I will be silent on the subjects on which we differ, no matter how dear a principle may be to me -another sigh; "I will count all outer and public things as naught compared with the devotion of my husband. I will go wherever he goes that I can; then nobody can say that he is ashamed of his wife - that she is too inferior or inefficient to go with him. I will go to the ambassadors' ball. Can I bear to meet her there? I can bear anything but the estrangement and loss of my husband." The ambassadors' ball was to be the culminating social event of the season. The crowded official receptions at which the "mob" overflowed were ended. Even the last Presidential reception before Lent had been celebrated. At that, this same "mob" of "the people" made their ingress and egress through the White House windows. Carpets, curtains, fine raiment, had gone down into a gulf of tatters before them. And now there was to be a ball which this mob could not invade, whose chief end was to be to prove to foreign potentates that exclusive splendor and fine society were possible even to the Federal capital. This ball, to be given by a few of the oldest and richest citizens of Washington to the members of the European embassies in the city, was to be attended only by privately invited guests. The possession of an invitation did not depend in any way upon money, but in every way upon official and social rank. The reception of one of these violet-tinted, silver-chased cards, was deemed by its receiver to be at once a recognition and insignia of "All Congress" was not to be inpersonal position. vited not by any means. All clodhoppers and plain people were to be left out; all people elegant and distinguished were, for once, to be invited without reference to their politics. It must be cosmopolitan, that the foreign ministers and ambassadors might see the country's best. Hon. Cyril King and Mrs. King were among the invited, but till now, Agnes had not thought of attending. "I think I will go to the ambassadors' ball, if you think I can make myself lock nice enough," said Agnes to Cyril that evening, lifting half-inquiring half-wistful eyes to his, to see how he would take the proposition. "For she is so fond of pleasure she cannot be a nun," said Cyril with a laugh. "Are you making sport of me, Cyril?" "Of course, not. Only, isn't it a new rôle for you to strike for, Aggie, to want to be a lady of society? 66 Why, of course I cannot be, Cyril; I know that. I don't want to be. It would be ever so much pleasanter spending the evening here alone with you, if you could only spare the time, but you can't. And as you are going to the ball, it would be so pleasant to go with Don't you want me to go, Cyril?" in a tremu you. lous tone. "Certainly. I shall be delighted; you go with me so seldom, Aggie. Only, I was thinking you couldn't enjoy yourself there. You don't dance, you know, and a ball is so different from a reception, where the entire business is jamming, talking, and cramming. At a ball, if you can't dance, you must be a wall-flower." "I shan't mind it. I shall like it to sit looking on to see how well you look dancing. I shall like that." "I doubt it," he said, turning upon her a quick, searching glance, remembering while he looked that |