stamina. She will not stop for trials, nor be kept in check by ordinary opposition. Her energy is too great for her strength, and she is inclined to perform more labor than she ought to attempt. The combative element is not so strong as the executive element.

Her fifth leading trait is sense of obligation, of duty and justice. She has moral courage, and is a lover of equity and right. All kinds of injustice appear to her like an outrage. It must be with difficulty that she can restrain herself from using very forcible language in denouncing sin and sin

ners.

Her sixth distinct element is her Cautiousness, which has a restraining influence on her executive powers, and greatly controls their action. She has much forethought, prudence, solicitude, and regard for results.

The seventh prominent quality gives her sympathy with humanity, and interest in the welfare of others, which stimulate her to action. She takes great delight in seeing others good and happy, and is willing to labor to secure these ends. Her large Benevolence has developed in her a missionary spirit, a desire to do good, and, if possible, to remove all impediments in

the way of human improvement and happiness.

The eighth and last, though not least, strong power of her mind is her social, domestic nature. She is devoutly attached to home, family, and friends; few are more sincere and devoted in their domestic feelings and affections. Nothing but a strong, sincere interest in the general welfare of the race would lead her to sacrifice her home feelings and enjoyments, to labor in a public manner, to create sentiment in favor of the right. She naturally places the family circle and domestic influence at the foundation of society, and it is easy for her to see that whatever disturbs the home-circle deranges the entire life, stunts moral growth, and prevents perfection of character and consistency of life; and whoever is engaged in any trade or business that tends to break up, disorganize or demoralize the family circle, is, in her estimation, engaged in doing the work of the evil one.

Some of her faculties are not large, and do not enter strongly into her character; but the combined action of these eight distinct conditions of her body and mind enables her to accomplish that special end, in which she takes a great interest.

I PAID a visit to my friend last week;
She has a beautiful, well-ordered home-
Husband and children, coach and horses sleek,
And at her bidding servants go and come.
She led me proudly through each stately room,
Rich in upholstered grandeur; laces fair
Hung at the windows, over crimson gloom,
And works of taste and art were everywhere.
The costly service on her snowy board
Glittered, in labored loveliness arrayed;
And savory food, and fragrant nectar pour'd,
Proclaimed the skill of mistress and of maid.

Yet she was worn, and silent, and her eye

Spoke not the wife and mother's glad content;

And in the parlor-windows gay and sweet, Green vines and flowers alone obscured the light.

The food was simple, yet therein was wrought Most studious care for nature's high demands

Books, papers, pictures, furnished food for thought,

And cheered the drudgery of the busy hands.

Fresh from their school the romping children came,

Their cheeks atingle and their minds aglow

Questions to ask, successes to proclaim
The breezy whirlwind, only mothers know.
And later, from the labors of his day,

The husband's dear, familiar step was heard; The smile, the look, in love's own conscious way,

Said more to me than any spoken word. Oh, richer friend! the world esteems as best Thy chosen lot, yet must one heart deplore. Oh, purer friend! I call thee greatly blest, And in my prayers could hardly wish thee

more.

ANNE F. BRADLEY.

NEW persons realize the power of imagination, or know with what rainbow tints it paints the prosy walks of every-day life. Indeed, had we not this wonderful faculty ofttimes our courage would fail, and we should faint by the way, overwhelmed by the burdens of life-the hard, unlovely duties which lie all along our path. It is only this power to grasp the ideal and bring it down to the bare realities of life, and envelop and hide their unseemly proportions within its halo of glory and beauty, which makes life desirable, or even endurable sometimes. But this faculty, which brings so much happiness when used aright, may, like all other faculties when too large or too active, or when used to excess, be an active cause of unhappiness. It is often, if not always, the abuse of use that brings suffering. "Evil is perverted good." It is interesting sometimes to trace out the workings of these faculties of the mind, and we will draw a picture or two in illustration of our theme:

Sylvia sits writing. The room in which she sits is a very small one; the chairs are wooden and hard; the table on which she writes is an oaken, home-made affair, covered with a dainty white spread; a homemade lounge, constructed of rough boards and covered with a home-made cushion and spread, occupies one side of the room; a rag-carpet covers the floor-a carpet whose every inch was made of old rags made clean by washing and torn into strips and sewn together by busy housewifely fingers, and

UNREAL.

then woven into a very presentable carpet by those same busy fingers. A wooden rocking-chair, with a cushion for back and bottom to make it easy, and a tidy cover, ornaments the center of the room, while near it stands a small parlor-stove, in which a bright wood fire crackles cheerfully. A shelf or bracket in one corner for papers and books, a mirror between two front windows, a few house-plants, a canary bird, and three or four simple, home-like pictures plainly framed, complete the homepicture.

Sylvia is writing to a friend whose acquaintance she has made abroad, and who never saw her little home-nest. She says, "I am sitting by my father's fire-a bright, cheerful one, too." When her friend reads that sentence a vision passes before his mind's eye, a picture which his fancy paints of the lady who penned these words, sitting by her cheerful fire; but is the vision which he sees the reality? By no means. He could not paint the real, for he has never seen so plain and home-like a picture as that of Sylvia's home, which we have portrayed; but the picture which he sees is a beautiful one which his own vivid imagina tion has conjured up, and which to him is as real as the plain reality is to Sylvia. He sees a grate-fire beneath a marble mantlepiece, sending a warm glow over the Brussels carpet; high ceilings adorned with carving and moldings; walls covered with beautiful paintings, luxurious sofas and chairs, statuary, etc. This is, indeed, un

real, but to him it is real, and thus is the real and unreal intertwined in our lives.

Sylvia loves to travel; she has friends in the Far West, in Colorado; they write glowing accounts of the country; it is "the finest in the world," they say, and they beg her to visit them in their Western home. She is a lover of the beautiful in nature and art, and on reading these descriptions her imagination immediately frames a picture --such a picture as only an imaginative and poetical mind and a true lover of nature can frame. In this picture is beautiful wild scenery of rock and hill and dale; lovely little babbling brooks winding through green shady glens, down rocky slopes, shaded by trees whose green branches reach over and bathe their rustling garments in the sparkling spray, then the water glides off, softly murmuring through woody headlands and over green pastures that stretch far away in the distance. Beautiful trees everywhere, and in great variety abound. Her's is the poet's dream, when he sings of the land where

"Rocks and hills and brooks and vales With milk and honey flow." Sylvia is a poet. She lives and revels in her ideal, and so long as it is ideal to her it is real. She longs for such a land as this, and therefore she clothes this far off country with the highest ideas of beauty, and nurses and cherishes her self-created picture. She will not use her reason-nothing so cold and calculating as reason can be allowed to step in to mar her beautiful dream. She resolves to visit her friends in that far-off land, and perhaps to live and die there, and is borne far away to the West, toward the Eldorado of her dreams. She crosses the plains in all their dreary monotony, and as she nears her destination begins anxiously to look for her ideal country; but she sees nothing but plains, plains. She leaves the cars and takes the stage, and as it rolls onward still no change, but the same dreary monotony. Night draws on, and finally shuts out the dismal view, and in the darkness she reaches her journey's end and greets her friends. She can scarcely sleep, so anxious is she to behold her promised land.

A

Before sunrise next morning she is up, dressed, and out to view her new home. She looks toward the west and beholds a scene which her fancy did not paintcould not have painted correctly. bold and rugged mass of rocks, projecting cliffs and sloping peaks, stretching upward and backward till they seemed to blend with the sky and are lost to view. Barren they appear, except for the few pines scattered over their surface, and awfully high and grand and cold. To the east a plain stretches away, away, as far as the eye can reach, and still on, with scarce a house, a tree, or a rise of ground beyond the confines of the little village in which she finds herself. North and south were the barefoot-hills, and they even were a relief after the vast view of plain, but scarcely a green tree anywhere. There was grass, but it was brown and sere, and, as she learned, always remained so. And this was the end of poor Sylvia's dream. This the barren real. She goes within and sits down with a feeling of desperation in her heart, and which can find no relief save in a flood of tears. It seems to her that those great ponderous mountain peaks might fall upon and crush her. She really regrets that she had not remained in her eastern home; then would not the beautiful ideal which was so dear to her have been so ruthlessly shattered.

Sylvia was still unmarried, and though scarcely old enough to be called an "old maid," was verging upon that trying and undesirable period in a woman's life. Yet she was young in experience as regards men and things of a worldly nature. As is the case usually with ladies who have remained single until they have arrived at an uncertain age, Sylvia had her ideal of the opposite sex, yet very likely she would have been. puzzled to describe him to you had you requested her to do so. He was undoubtedly very similar to any common woman's ideal of a true man, only exaggerated to a degree commensurate with the peculiarities of her mental constitution. He was everything noble, true, grand, rather to be worshiped and idolized than fellowshiped with in the common walks of life. Scarcely knowing