Thus far fortune had smiled upon the darling scheme. True, there were still a few difficulties to be met, such as the possible pangs of homesickness, and the certain horror of being examined by the "school committee"; but "the star of the unconquered will" had arisen in Ruphelle's breast, and she was not to be daunted.

"Aren't you afraid your pupils won't obey a young girl of fourteen ?" asked Mrs. Townsend, doubtfully.

"Ah," thought Ruphelle, "piqued, is she? Sees that I'm smarter than her daughter Jane !"

"If I were in your place," added Mrs. Townsend, kindly, "I would n't tell my age."

"I dare say people won't ask me, ma'am."

"Yes, but they will, child; they always do."

"Then I'll have to tell.”

"No, you can say you are not eighteen,' which is perfectly true."

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Why," cried Ruphelle, opening her honest eyes very wide, "'t would choke me to say that!"

"My dear, it is a harmless fraud. If your real age is known, depend upon it you'll not be treated with much respect."

"Now, Mrs. Townsend," faltered Ruphelle, "you belong to the church, and you ought to know what 's wicked and what is n't. If you advise me to say I'm not quite eighteen, I'll say so."

"I do advise it by all means," replied Mrs. Townsend. So that matter was settled.

Witch Hill was a pretty little district tucked away in one corner of the town of Lincoln. Ruphelle reached it on Saturday afternoon, after travelling thirty hilly miles by stage. Her first impressions were not very favorable, for Mrs. Johonnet, with whom she was to board, met her at the door surrounded by five untidy children, and asked her, before her bonnet was fairly removed, how old she was.

The poor girl's heart almost turned over. "Not quite eighteen," replied she, in a choked voice; adding to herself, “O, what a lie! A black lie!" "You don't say so," returned her hostess. "Do you suppose you've stopped growing? Been sickly, I guess? You look rather pindling."

Ruphelle blushed hotly, and shrank from Mrs. Johonnet's gaze, which she thought was the most penetrating one she had ever met.

She now began to have a foreboding fear of the three "committee men," whom she must see in the evening. "Will they come early, Mrs. Johonnet?" asked she at the tea-table.

"Well, they live close by, the farthest one considerable scant of half a mile. They'll be here by six, I think it's likely."

And it was already five. The amount of supper which Ruphelle ate after this would not have sufficed for a humming-bird. She lost her self-possession, answered questions at random, and offended Mrs. Johonnet by pecking daintily at a piece of custard-pie, which the good woman supposed she scorned because it was sweetened with molasses.

For her part, Ruphelle had conceived a childish dislike for her hostess, because she thought she detected a gleam of satisfaction in that lady's eye, as she said, "Don't take sugar in your tea, Miss Preston? I want to

know!"

This suspicion of shallow hospitality gave the little girl her first twinge of homesickness. "Hope I sha'n't have much appetite while I'm here,” thought she; "I don't like people to watch everything I put in my mouth."

After tea she went into the parlor, followed by three noisy children, one of them two years old, and an undesirable companion, on account of the maple sugar which adhered to her hands and face.

Ruphelle gazed mournfully about the room, and, "weary and heart-tired," longed to go somewhere and cry. The stiff sofa and wooden chairs looked as if they did not feel at home and acquainted with one another, but as if they had all gone visiting; and as for the landscape from the window, the disheartened child thought it as forlorn as a desert.

She had just beheld with dismay the impress of the baby's fingers on her pink muslin dress, when the door opened, and two thirds of the awful board of committee were ushered into the room.

Ruphelle's hands became ice, her tongue leather, and a lump arose in her throat which choked her voice. In reply to the solemn questions propounded, she affirmed that "green was a common noun, and "mountain an intransitive verb. She put Greenland under the Equator, and removed the Red Sea into South America. She was frightened by her own blunders. That mysterious bit of paper called a certificate began to seem as priceless to her as a king's ransom, and as unattainable.

But soon a diversion occurred. Mr. Spaulding, whose forte was orthography, proposed the word "Skipo." Ruphelle, after many trials, confessed that she could not spell it.

"Easy enough," said Mr. Spaulding, glibly, ❝S, c, i, ski, p, i, o, po, Skipo!"

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Ah," thought Miss Preston, "if that 's all you know, sir, I'm not afraid of you." And after this her answers were so ready and correct that she was freely promised a certificate as soon as Dr. Prince, the third member of the board, should return to town and add his signature.

Ruphelle felt as victorious as if she had parted with all her back teeth without the aid of chloroform.

"You look very young for a teacher," said Mr. Blount, with irrepressible curiosity; "may I ask how old you are?”

"Not quite eighteen," replied our heroine, desperately; at the same time whispering to her conscience, "Only a pepper-and-salt lie!"

Were the people of Witch Hill a set of detectives, all bent upon ferreting out her age? Alas! she soon regarded "not eighteen " as only a white lie, and at last almost believed it was the truth.

Monday morning came. Would it never be nine o'clock, that she might see those adorable pupils, who were going to love her and obey every glance of her eye? Once she shook her watch, thinking it had stopped.

Finally she started fifteen minutes before the hour, balancing the doorkey on her finger. The children, with hats, bonnets, and dinner-baskets, stood near the school-house, waiting for a peep at the bright little teacher.

"What a whalin' big woman!" said Sylvanus Bean, one of the large boys. "What 'll you bet I can't lift her with my little finger?"

As Miss Preston drew near, she looked at the upturned faces with a tremulous smile, which tried to be very mature and condescending. She unlocked the door, whereupon the children quietly entered, and watched her as she hung up her shaker, deposited her Bible on the desk, and then stood by the window examining her watch.

When she rang the bell, the imperious sound startled her. What was she going to do with all the time? She took down the names very slowly, set shaky copies, and overturned an inkstand, heard everybody's lessons twice, and the alphabet children's four times; still it was only eleven o'clock, though she was hungry enough for three! Certainly they did have the longest days here at Witch Hill!

She must do something to wear away the minutes; so she patted a little boy on the head, and asked him if his mother was quite well. He was a social child, unused to the restraints of a school-room, and he replied with animation: “Yes, my mother's well. She's a smart lady, she knows how to take out her teeth. Can you do that? Did you ever see my mother?"

Ruphelle thought it hardly dignified or safe to risk any more conversation, but concluded to deliver a lecture. It was her maiden speech, and proved to be a remarkable specimen of oratory, with as many heads as a field of clover.

Nobody must speak, she said, or ask to speak, or leave a seat; nobody must stir a foot or lift an eyelid without leave. Everybody must look straight at his book, and, though a pistol should be fired at his ear, he must not turn his head. If nobody did thus, and everybody did so, then how happy all the parents would be, and, behold, what a number of Presidents of the United States would spring up forthwith!

Just as the little teacher was forgetting her hunger, and growing eloquent, somebody laughed!

Ruphelle wished the floor would open and swallow her, but that was not to be expected. Tears rose to her eyes; she let them drip back into her heart. She would n't cry, -O no! And the next thing she knew she was laughing hysterically, and the rest of her speech, like Aladdin's palace, was suddenly missing.

The children all liked her from that moment, and considered her "jolly"; but as for her authority it was gone forever. The first week seemed like a lifetime, and at the end of it, scold as she might, nobody heeded her. The scholars whispered, laughed, and whittled slate-pencils before her very eyes.

As a warning to the rest, she made a frightful example of one naughty child, by pinning her to the skirt of her dress, and marching her across the floor. In the midst of this proceeding, Dr. Prince, the third and most for

midable "committee man," arrived to visit the school. Ruphelle was so frightened and distressed, that she said, "How do you do, ma'am?" and asked the doctor to take off his bonnet. The consequence was a chorus of laughter from the children, and a look of intense amazement on the part of the visitor.

It was a dreary, dreary summer for the little teacher. She might have said it was "no summer, only a winter painted green."

The Hartwells sent to request that she would chastise Johnny, and the Beans that she would n't touch Tommy. The Dudleys wished she would keep a little order, and the Daggets considered her a very unprofitable teacher. Mrs. Tuttle, who came in with her knitting to look around, was sure she should go crazy in such a noise; and Mrs. Spaulding openly called it a "baby's school."

Every night Ruphelle rolled her miseries into a lump, and cried over them. She grew so thin and pale that her father, going to see her, urged her to close her tedious labors. But the poor child sadly shook her head; she wished to finish her self-appointed task, cost her what it might..

But, as it happened, the agent suddenly discovered that the money "would n't hold out," and the district decided that two months was quite sufficient for the summer school. Ruphelle had grown very wise, and understood this as a delicate hint that her services were no longer acceptable. However, she merely said, "Very well, Mr. Johonnet," crushed back the tears, dismissed the school, and ingloriously started for home.

"Poor Ruphelle!" said Brother Ben, "you look like an example of suffering affliction and patience.' By the way, how did you enjoy the witches?" "Ben, please never speak to me of school as long as you live!"

The youth laughed. "Strange you did n't fancy the business when you have such a 'gift for government.' Perhaps you're like the man who had such control over his dog. 'See how he minds me!' said he. 'Out of the house, Towler!' And when the animal did n't go, but crept under the table, the man said, 'O, well, Towler, out doors, under the table, anywhere! It's all the same." "

"That will do, Ben. If you wish to know of worse trials than I 've had this summer, you'll find them recorded in the Book of Job. That's all I have to say."

"I see," retorted Ben, "you 're cured of one infirmity, palpitation of the tongue."

But one day Ruphelle said confidentially to her mother: "Mother, do you know there is n't any sort of remarkability about me, and I 've found it out? I'm just like other children of my age. If you 're perfectly willing, I'd rather not grow up just yet."

And her mother replied: "See that you remember it, my daughter; for I have somewhere read that a woman may hope to be an angel some day, but can never be a girl again.”

Sophie May.

CASH.

"CASH!

ASH! Nine!" That is the glove department. "Cash! Two!" linen clerk calls. "Cash! Five!" Silks. Dear me! how very busy the five or six pairs of boys' feet have to be, the great store is so crowded, it is so warm, and the tired clerks are so impatient! It is a mercy if the poor little heads be not crazed. They get used to it, and almost before the call is uttered, away they go, now here, now there, darting through the crowd like a swallow after a gadfly, and with an “Ay!" or a " Here!" they snatch the money from the counter, and are off to the cashier's desk.

For

But it is weary work, and towards night some of the little feet ache sadly, and the childish voices grow hoarse, especially if they be new-comers. such there is little mercy.

"Here, you!" says the "big boy" of the half-dozen, with a rude shove, to a little blue-eyed pale-face of some ten years' experience of life. "What ye doing, loafing round this way? Three! Can't ye hear? There 't is. Calicoes." And away hurries Pale-face, to be greeted by the calico clerk with "You've been long enough a coming. Step lively now!"

Closing time comes at last, even the fashionables being weary for one day of feasting their eyes or buying what they do not want. The proprietors went home long ago to dinner and a drive in the Park; the clerks give the last twirl to their mustaches preparatory to a saunter up Broadway, and the five comrades of little Pale-face whoop away in the same direction, one to ride a few blocks on the steps of an up-town stage, another to rush along, overturning a bootblack's apparatus, — quite accidentally, of course, another, the "big boy," to chaff with the old apple-woman on the corner about a three-cent cigar.

Blue-eyed Cash" does n't seem in any hurry for his supper; he even sits down awhile on the Park-railings as he crosses Union Square, very tired, perhaps sick. Greater men than he ever will be have paused ere now to debate the momentous question, “To be, or not to be?" Shall he go and tell his mother that he cannot stand it any longer, that it is too hard for him, that he does n't like the boys, that he is sick, that, in short, he would rather do something else, or nothing?

Not yet; the day when his father's lips had kissed him, and said, “You will be a good boy to mother, Frankie," and his father's hand was laid on his head for the last time before hand and lips lay silent and cold in Greenwood, was too fresh in memory. And how he had found his mother crying, with Baby Willie and little sister clinging to her and crying too for sympathy, and his mother had said they were poor, and she knew not where to look for work, and he had straightened up so bravely and looked very mannish in spite of tears in his eyes and throat, as he said: "I can work. You know pa said I must take care of you and Sis, and I 'm a going to. Don't cry, ma; I shall soon be a man. I can go to market now, and cut wood and