WELL

EMILY AT HOME AGAIN.

now, Dr. Hardhack, does n't our Emily look beautiful?" said Emily's mother and grandmother and aunt, all in one breath.

Emily had come home from her long abode in the country, and had brought her friend Pussy Willow with her; and they were sitting together now, a pair of about as rosy young females as one should wish to see of a summer day.

Dr. Hardhack turned round, and glared through his spectacles at Emily. "Pretty fair," he said; "pretty fair! A tolerable summer's work, that!" - and he gave a pinch to Emily's rosy cheek. "Firm fibre, that! real hard flesh, made of clover and morning dew, none of your flabby, sidewalk, skinny construction."

"Well now, Doctor, we want you to tell us just what she may do, just how much. I suppose you know, now she's got into a city, she can't dress exactly as she did up in the country."

"I see, I see," said Doctor Hardhack; "I take at once."

"You see," said Aunt Zarviah, "there is n't a thing of all her clothes that she can wear, having been all summer in those loose sacks, you know. She's sort o' spread out, you see."

"I should think so," said Doctor Hardhack. "Well, my advice is, that you begin gradually screwing her up; get her corsets ready, with plenty of whalebone and a good tough lace; but don't begin too hard, — just tighten a little every day, and by and by she 'll get back to where all her things will fit her exactly."

"But, Doctor, won't that injure her health?" said the mamma.

"Of course it will, but I fancy she 'll stand it for one winter; it won't quite kill her, and that 's all we doctors want. If it suits you all, it does me, I'm sure. What should I do for my bread and butter, if all the girls of good families kept on living as these two have been living this summer? I really could n't afford it, in a professional point of view."

"Well, I have something on this point to say," said Emily. "I would n't lose my health again for anything that can be named.”

"O pooh, pooh! I've heard a deal of talk of this sort before now. When patients are first up from a sickness, how prudent they mean to be!

'When the Devil was sick, the Devil a monk would be,
When the Devil got well, the devil a monk was he.'"

"Thank you, Doctor," said Miss Emily; "but I think that poetry does n't apply to me, if you please. I hope I'm not of that family."

"Well, but seriously, Doctor, you must tell us just how much it will do for Emily to do," said the mamma. "One does n't want to give up the world entirely, and yet one does n't want to lose one's health."

"I see," said the Doctor; "I appreciate the case entirely. Well, let her

begin with the opera twice a week, and one German, kept up till daylight. In one week she will feel stronger than ever she did, and declare that nothing hurts her; then she can take two Germans, and then three, and so on. Fact is," said the Doctor, “of all the devices of modern society, none is so good for the medical practice as these Germans; my best cases are made out of 'em; they unite all the requisites for forming first-rate patients that keep on our hands for months and years, and are as good as an annuity to us. I'm not a fool, madam. I must look ahead for my bread and butter next spring, you see."

"But, Doctor, I 'm not going to Germans at all," said Emily, stoutly. "I know now what life is, and what health is worth, and I 'm not going to waste it in that way. Besides, I'm going to try to live for something bet

ter."

"Live for something better!" said the Doctor. "What sort of talk is that for a young lady in the first New York society? What is there to live for better? I thought of it the other night when I was at a confirmation at Grace Church, and saw a whole bevy of pretty creatures, who all were engaging to 'fight manfully under Christ's banner,' and thought where they would be before spring. Whirling round all night in a low-necked dress is the kind of fighting they do; and then I'm called in as hospital surgeon to the dear disciples when they are carried off the field exhausted. I know all about it. You can't, of course, live for anything better. You could n't, for the world, be called singular, and be thought to have odd notions, — could you? That would be too horrible.

"Now I knew a rich New York girl once who took to bad courses. She would go round visiting the poor, she would sit up with sick people, and there was no end to the remarks made about her. People clearly saw how wicked it was of her to risk her health in that way, how late hours and bad air and fatigue would certainly undermine her health, and she was quite cast out of the synagogue. You must n't breathe bad air or overexert yourself, unless you do so from a purely selfish motive; then it's all right and proper, this is our New York gospel."

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The

Pussy Willow's blue eyes were open very wide on the Doctor as he spoke, and there was a laugh in them, though she did not laugh otherwise. Doctor caught the expression, and shook his cane at her.

What do you

"O, you need n't sit there looking mischievous, miss. know of life? You're nothing but a country girl, and you know no more of it than the bobolinks and chip-squirrels do. You'll soon learn to be ashamed of your roses, and to think it's pretty to have bad health. I'll bet a copper that you'll begin a course of corsets in a fortnight, and by spring we shall send you back to your milk-pails as white and withered as Miss Emily there. It 's astonishing how fast we can run a girl down, taking one thing with another, the corsets, and the hot rooms with plenty of gas escaping into them from leaky tubes, and then operas and Germans for every night in the week. Of course it's a charity to give you a good stiff dose of it; it's hospitality, you see."

"Now, Doctor Hardhack, you dreadful man," said Emily, "you must just stop this talk. I brought Pussy down here on purpose to have somebody to help me to live better than I have lived. We shall just take a peep or two at New York sights, but we are not going into the gay world.”

"Ta, ta, ta ! don't tell me," said the Doctor, shaking his cane playfully at her; "you won't be so unfair as to cut me in that way. I shall hear of you yet, you'll see "; and so the Doctor departed.

"What a droll man he is!" said Pussy.

"It's just his way," said Emily's mother; "he 's always running on in this strange way about everything. For my part, I never know half what he means."

"It is tolerably plain what he means," said Emily. "You must do exactly contrary to what he tells you, as I shall; so, aunty, don't trouble yourself to try to alter my things, unless it be to let them all out, for I'm going to keep all the breathing-room I've got, whether I have a pretty waist or not. I'd rather have color in my cheeks, and a cheerful heart, than the smallest waist that ever was squeezed together."

"Such a pity one could n't have both!" said Aunt Zarviah. "Your cousin Jane was in here last week with her new bismarck silk, and it fits her so beautifully! Somebody said she looked as if she 'd been melted and poured into it; there was n't a crease or a wrinkle ! It did look lovely!"

"Well, Aunt Zarviah, I must try some other way of looking lovely. Maybe, if I am always gay and happy, and in good spirits, and have a fresh bright face, it may make up for not looking as if I had been melted and poured into my clothes."

To do Emily justice, she showed a good deal of spirit in her New York life. She and Pussy agreed to continue together their course of reading and study for at least two hours a day; then they both took classes in a mission Sunday-school, which was held in the Church of the Good Shepherd, and they took up their work in real good earnest.

"Now," said Emily, "I am not going to give my class just the odds and ends and parings of strength which I have left after I have spent almost all in amusing myself; but I mean to do just the other way, and spend the strength left from really useful things in amusing myself."

The girls kept a list of their classes, and used regularly every week to visit the families from which the children came. In the course of these visits they found much else to do. They saw much of the life of the poor; they saw paths daily opening before them in which the outlay of a little time and a little money enabled them to help some poor struggling family to keep up a respectable standing; they learned the real worth of both time and money; and the long walks they took in all weathers in the open air kept up their strength and vigor. They went occasionally of an evening to some of the best sights in New York, and they saw what was really worth seeing; but they did not make a winter's work of rushing from one amusement to another.

On the whole, the two girls, in spite of Doctor Hardhack, proved that a