LITMIR.BIZ

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went to live in quiet bachelor quarters together. Work, earnest and absorbing, filled the days and often the evenings.

      “I have asked mother and Jenny to spend a few days with us,” said Hugh one evening. “Jenny teaches in a town not far from here, and my good mother has been visiting her, and will stay here a little on her way to West Beverly.”

      “That will do us good. I have had so little time to see ladies that it will seem quite a home touch to our bachelor life,” responded James.

      Mrs. Wadsworth and her daughter came, and a week passed happily. Jenny was intelligent and charming – how could she be other than lovely with such a mother? The four walked in the evenings, Jenny seeming naturally to be left in the care of James, while Hugh delighted in showing attention to his mother. When mother and daughter had gone home the quiet room seemed desolate. Hugh missed them, but James was absolutely homesick. New York, great and fascinating, had lost its attraction. With the departure of one face the sun seemed to fade out of the sky.

      “You seem sad, James,” said Hugh, as they sat together one evening, – he wondered if Jenny’s visit did not have something to do with it, – “and perhaps you better take a few days’ vacation and go home.”

      “I am restless and unhappy; I scarcely know why. I think a change would do me good.”

      James started the next day for West Beverly, but easily persuaded himself that a call on Jenny Wadsworth at the place where she was teaching, if only for a few hours, would make the journey pleasanter. As he surmised, he felt lighter-hearted after his visit with her, especially as he obtained from her a promise that she would correspond with him.

      Mrs. Carter, who idolized her son, was made very happy by his coming. When he returned to the city, work seemed less irksome, letters grew singularly interesting and comforting, till one day James said:

      “Hugh, there’s no use in trying to hide from you the fact that I love your sister Jenny, and wish to marry her as soon as I can support her.”

      “She loved you long ago, James, but I was not allowed to tell you of it. Are you engaged?”

      “Yes.”

      “Well, you’ve found out who the ‘friend’ is, then?”

      James Carter turned pale.

      “You don’t mean that Jenny earned money to help take me through college?”

      “Yes.”

      “Then I will pay her back compound interest, the noble girl.”

      Years have passed. Hugh, now very wealthy, has never married, but finds a happy home with James and Jenny Carter and their little son Hugh. The Hon. William Carter learned that it pays a thousand-fold to help a boy on in the world, and Jenny rejoices that she, too, helped a young man to success.

       THE UNOPENED LETTER.

      THERE was a carriage waiting at the door, and the servant had just announced to Miss Hamilton that a gentleman had called to see her.

      “I will be down in a moment,” answered a cheery, blue-eyed girl, as she slipped an unopened letter into her pocket. She had recognized the handwriting as the postman handed it to her. The letter was from a young college senior in the quiet New England town, at home for his summer vacation, – Arthur Ellsworth, a manly fellow, whom she had known and admired from childhood. And now Arthur’s brother, Elmer Ellsworth, was waiting to take her for a drive. The latter was the handsomer of the two possibly, with his fine form and dark eyes. He, also, was in the last year of college life.

      After pleasant greetings the young people started, in the bright September morning, for the proposed ride. Who that has driven through Lexington and Woburn, past Mystic pond, will ever forget the quiet country roads, the historic associations, the variety of wooded hills and pretty valleys? Now the two schoolfriends talked of the present with its joy and the future with its hopes, of the books they had studied and the plans they had made. Now they gathered golden-rod, and listened to the song of the birds in the bracing air. It was a fitting time to say what had long been in Elmer’s heart – that sometime, when his profession had been entered upon, she would be the woman whom he wished to make his wife.

      It was a hard matter for her to decide. Both brothers had been dear to her, perhaps Arthur especially, – and both were noble and worthy. Arthur had never spoken to her of marriage; and now Elmer had told her his love, and that she could make him happy. Had Arthur spoken first, perhaps her heart would have more warmly responded; but in the beauty of that autumn morning, with the hopeful, earnest young man by her side, she gave her promise to be his wife.

      As soon as she reached her home she ran upstairs, hastily threw off her wraps, and remembered the letter from Arthur, in her pocket. Opening it, she read:

      “How many times I have wanted to tell you that I loved you! How often have the words died on my lips! But now, before I go back to college, I must ask you if you can return that love, and sometime be mine.”

      Alas, that she had not opened the letter sooner! She could not tell Arthur that she had preferred him to Elmer; that were disloyalty to the man whom she had promised to wed. She could only say that she was already betrothed to his brother. She married him whom she had promised. Both men became prominent in the history of New England – this little story is true. One went through life unmarried. His letter was opened too late.

      THREE COLLEGE STUDENTS

      “WHAT’S the work for vacation, boys?”

      The speaker was a tall, dark-haired, open-faced young man, who sat with his two companions on the sloping ground of Amherst College, looking away to silent Mount Tom and the fertile meadows of the Connecticut-river valley.

      “It’s something downright earnest for me,” said James Wellman, a broad-shouldered, big-hearted youth from the neighboring county, who in spite of poverty and many obstacles had fought his way by the hardest work. “I’m in debt for board, books unpaid for; but I’ve seen worse times than these. I’m used to standing alone, so I’m ready for the battle. I shall take an agency – books, or maybe clothes-wringers, to sell.”

      “That will be fun, I’ll warrant,” said the first speaker, Grant Reynolds, whose father, a rich manufacturer, had spared no pains to make his son’s life a bed of roses, altogether different from what his own had been.

      “Not much fun,” said James. “You wouldn’t like contemptuous looks from women who know less than you, and whose hearts had become hardened because their husbands, once poor, very likely, had become the possessors of houses on aristocratic streets. Why, a woman – I will not call her a lady – whose husband used to be a stable boy, but who has become a rich government official, ordered me out of the house when I was selling chromos. She said ‘agents were tramps and a nuisance;’ and when I explained that I was working my way through college, she answered, remembering the former occupation of her lord, perhaps, ‘Be somebody’s coachman, then, and earn an honorable living.’ I wanted to add, ‘And run away with your pretty daughter;’ but I only replied politely, ‘Nobody would hire an inexperienced man for two months, which is as long as our vacation lasts.’”

      “But these must be rare cases,” said Grant. “Most well-to-do ladies are very courteous.”

      “Yes, when you meet them on an equality in drawing-rooms; but not always when you are a workingman.”

      “Well, I’ll try it for once. It’ll be a fine lark anyway, and I shall learn something of human nature.”

      “That you will,” answered Wellman. “I’ll take the country round that aristocratic town down the river, and you may take the stylish avenues. You’ll find blue blood in plenty – blue because the fathers owned land there a little before the present generation. Of course, you’ll find many well-bred people who are proud of their heads rather than of their purses; but even these are often very ‘select.’ We profess equality, and are probably more democratic than any other country; but a little extra amount of front lawn, or the fact that our great-grandfather was a governor, or that one woman has ‘William Morris’ chintz in her chambers, of which, perhaps, her neighbor

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