back-action, ten-donkey power Rochester, and he can't treat me mean enough to do his feelings justice. And the result is, I find myself thinking about him night and day. What perverse animals we women are! A certain amount of kicking seems indispensable to our happi

ness.

What makes me madder than any thing else is the fact that this individual has literally nothing to recommend him to my interest but the fact that he has fenced himself in against me. Victor Hugo defines man as the animal that laughs; hand my name down to posterity for defining women as the divinity that climbs.

Climbing-that is it. I am climbing every moment of my life, either in imagination or reality; climbing the fence Mr. Taft has built about himself. I am like a mouse that prospects with untiring zeal the vulnerable spot in the trap for the morsel of cheese that seems so tempting. But, mind you, the mouse acts on her best judgment, while I have learned, from a previous experience, that after the first bewitching bait there is nothing but starvation. For I tell you, Liz, that love don't last after marriage.

And, great heavens, who would want it to? It is the most tormenting of all infernal conditions that ever was hatched. It binds you neck and crop to one idea; you cannot get away. You are staked out with a short halter, and all you can do is to wind yourself up into tortured, complicated knots and snarls in neverending variety.

There are but two happy moments in the whole experience. The first is when you cut loose from your senses and drop in. There is a dare-devil recklessness in this species of abandonment that challenges all heaven for competition. Then follows the double-distilled quintessence of purgatory (label it with a word of four letters and pass on) into which you are submerged; and presently this flood flows off, and you crawl forth to the light of day weak, helpless, feeling like a drowned rat, but happy; mind that, Liz, happy at last just to be out of

torment.

AND AS LIKE AS NOT YOU'LL TAKE THE DIVE AGAIN IN LESS THAN A YEAR.

I tell you, my girl, I stand dumbfounded before this last sentence; I give myself up for a hopeless case. And it isn't me alone; it is you, it is every living soul all gone to the "demnition bow-wows" in one line of small caps. All hopelessly insane, and no keepers to take care of us.

Now, of all the "aggerawations" connected with this blarsted, humbugging life this is the darndest.

And this lover of mine; lover, indeed-ha! ha! If you could hear that laugh it would curdle your blood, it is so bitter and wicked. Well, then-Mr. Taft-he's a homely little villain, and as for sense he don't begin to be my equal. (Mem.-A man don't need sense if he will carry around a little private bulldog in his disposition with which to bark at the women out of his eyes.) I have never heard Mr. Taft make but one attempt at a laugh, and that was when he had said something particularly cutting to me; and oh, what a laugh! It went off like a bunch of damp fire-crackers. There may. be other laughs where that came from, but surely it was the pioneer of its tribe, and broke its brambly way as an advance guard. He has no wit, and no appreciation of it in others, and you know, madam, that is my strong suit. But Mr. Taft-O, heavens! he's as dry as Mark Twain's last joke, and as depressing in his influence as the funny column in the newspapers.

He is a lawyer. I said he was homely, but that cannot be. There is dignity and character in his face, and reticence, and modest selfrespect. Worth makes weight; and it seems as if he had absorbed some special privileges in specific gravity, and could hold down the beam against any other man. In appearance he is short and stocky-not fat, but full; and as he wears his clothes tight, and very fine and fashionable, he is a regular little brick. He stands square on his dew-claws, and has the finest walk of any man in the city. He clips it off down street like a small stern-wheel steamer. He "squabbles" all my admiration of handsome men by being so much handsomer than the handsomest of them without any beauty at all. He is on the shady side of forty, I think; but you know I was not a spring chicken myself, until I got released from my hated marriage and went back on my age. But there is something about Mr. Taft-a cool alabaster polishthat seems widely removed from the heat of youth. Let me see what it is. He seems automatic, as if the Lord had not made him; as if he had accreted his existence from some other source, to show the Lord what could be done without his assistance.

I was in his library one day, and then I could understand him better. There was all the dry, rubbishy books on law that ever were written. Volumes and volumes; Chitty and Blackstone, and Wawkeen Miller, and all the rest. And there were safes, and holes innumerable full of paper bundles, and these were cases he had had, I suppose. Now, my little man is a digest of all these books. He has fed on them; they are incorporated in every atom of his body. He is a man made out of the raw material of books,

and informed, and vivified, and set in motion by their contents. The ten pounds or so of original man-material which he brought into the world has served as stock on which to graft a cutting of law; and the cutting has absorbed the original until there is nothing but law in the whole concern.

(Mem.-Can he love a woman, I wonder? Is it in the soul of the law to implant such a passion?)

Yes, Mr. Taft is a book-worm. 'Way back in the home nest, I remember, we brats found a book-worm one day, and dissected it under a microscope; and it was full of "chawred up paper," as we told mother afterward, who was in the habit of spanking us when our scientific investigations took a cruel turn.

It was an unfortunate thought, this of the book-worm, coming to me in his library as it did, for I was instantly filled with the idea that he, too, was filled with chewed up paper. Indeed, it seems likely, and if so I am sure the pieces were chewed up by rule and red lined on the edges; also, that they are packed in according to the most perfect method, all the space being fully occupied. His appearance bears me out in this. His form is so plump, and his skin so creamy fair. He is just as compact as he can be ; and his actions, though rapid, prompt, and graceful, seem to be by rote. He has a set répertoire of movements, and when he gets through them he is wound up and goes through them again.

I cannot tell you what intense curiosity I have about him. His simplest acts are full of interest for me. If I hear his name but mentioned, I can feel my ears prick up and set forward instantly. No matter how dead I may be in every other direction, I am all alive Taftward.

MURDERATION, Liz! Think of a woman of my bitter experience coiling up all her logic against marriage and going over to the demented majority! I wonder if I am fool enough to marry him. There is another question of graver import, poking its head high above this one, and goggling at me with the round, unmeaning eyes of Minerva's bird; and that question is, whether he is fool enough to marry me?

There is a sign on the hall-door of his rooms, high up, "C. L. TAFT." And you don't know what fascination the name has for me. All the letters are square-built and stocky, like the man himself; and they are plump, as if stuffed with cut paper. There is another sign, farther down the hall, with the letters carved bodily out of the solid board; and a window in the background, the light of which shines through the open spaces. I have my own opinion of the

person represented by this name. I do not know him, but I am sure he is too spiritual to succeed in this wooden world, and had better be transplanted to his heavenly home. I shiver as I look at the intangible representation, and turn to my comfortable, earthly letters, so suggestive of life and warmth. Now, imagine me secretly looking up at this door, like Hope gazing upon the overhanging cross in the chromo we see everywhere; or maybe it is Faith, or Patience, or Charity, or some other female representative of some special virtue. I have no memory for anything now-I am daft outside of Taft. Well, I gaze on these magical letters. They are all Greek to me except the last word. I wonder what the C stands for. I run through the whole range of names-Charles, Clarence, Clement, Conrad, Carl, Claude, and all the rest down to Caleb. I always stick on Caleb, with a wretched conviction. I hate the name—it is simply awful; and I feel it is part of the infamous luck tracking me through life that this man's name should be Caleb. If ever you have a doubt of anything, Liz, no matter how wide a range it may take, from despair upward, be sure and hitch on to the lowest round; then, if you find yourself mistaken, it will be because there were invisible rounds below the range of your utmost dread, and all you will have to do will be to unhitch and descend. So I feel sure, if this man's name is not Caleb, it is something worse. Then I go to the L, but I can make nothing of it. It is as inscrutable as the Sphinx. It has not even the semblance of a countenance to give it expression. Just two little sticks and a small triangle. Are these symbols, and have they some cabalistic meaning?

Come to think about it, this is the first time I have written you since I came here to live. I am copyist in the office of Lehang & Morgan; and Mr. Taft's rooms are just across the hall from ours. Both my employers are kind to me, and Mr. Morgan would be in love with me if I would let him. But who wants what they can have. Give me the pleasures of the chasegive me something to overcome. I want to break down barriers. I want to climb into somebody's pen; (I just "clim" out of one, but don't mention it.) I am like a breachy ox-it makes no difference which side of the fence I am on, I must jump it.

Lawyers are a new revelation to me. From the nature of their profession, they are secretive. They question, and cross-question, and hunt for motives, and trust no one. At least, this is true of Mr. Taft. He can no more comprehend my frankness than he can fly. I am a perfect enigma to him. He continually probes the undertow of my character for what does

not exist. He smells dead men's bones, and means to drag them to the light of day. Our conversations are made up of questions on his part, and answers, dodges, evasions, and all sorts of whimsical lies on mine. He is unconscious that the strongest point in his social life is an interrogation point.

The knowledge he has of men and women has been gathered from law-suits. He fights shy of the "softer" sex, and only knows them in the witness-box. He keeps a kind of secret, detective watch over me, and does not suspect that I know every move in his game better than he does. Little he dreams that the concealments of the wise are open proclamations to the foolish. If I look at the clock, and afterward put on my hat, he is sure I have an appointment with some one, and would bet on its being a man. I can read all this, and much more; he is as open to me as I am shut to him. I am glad to be an object of interest to him on any terms, and find no fault with the situation.

I have written enough to show you that he has no appreciation of me. What is there to appreciate? Something, perhaps; I hardly know what. But I tell you, Liz, the cussedness so apparent on the surface of my kind of women is only an effervesence, that purifies the current below. Keep my tongue still, and, if I should escape explosion, I might pass for a reasonably good woman. However, it matters little what people think so that one really is the best she knows. And, as for me, I have love and pity; I hate selfishness and hypocrisy, and would like the privilege of speaking the truth. The necessity of concealment from the strictures of social enactment makes me mad. What person, or number of persons, have the right to extort a lie from an honest soul? I want to live out the best there is in me, and the world won't let me do it.

And Mr. Taft's treatment of me shows that he is ignorant of the existence of such feelings; and he regards their careless and whimsical outcropping through my talk as a covering to something I wish to conceal. This phase of our doings pains me, and puts it in my head that I am possibly barking up the wrong tree for a man.

I don't know where this thing will land me. Shouldn't wonder if there were breakers ahead. I'll write again soon.

As ever, your friend,

CATHERINE ELLIS.

[At the time I received this letter, I had not seen Kate Ellis for several years. I had written to her on hearing of her being in San Francisco, and the foregoing is the reply. We had

been girls together, and I could not forget the charm of her society. She was so strong, so loving, so pitying, so hopeful, so original, and so unconventional. The irrepressible quality of her spirits, her frank jollity and her laugh, which was music and sunshine, with a touch of pathos, would ring through my memory as often as I thought of her. Her married life had been wretched, and she had lost her only child. This quite crushed her for a time; but the years had brought healing, and Kate was herself again. It was only a short time until I received her second letter.]

Dear Lizzie:- How good you are to write me so soon, and how you do write. If I know anything about it, you will make your mark in literature yet. Now, Liz, aren't you ashamed to talk of obstacles? What is an obstacle but something to climb over? One goes to sleep on a smooth road. So much for that nonsense. And what did you say about failures? Don't you know that a failure is just a door shut in your face; some other person's door at that. When you reach your own door, it will open to you. And you are borrowing trouble about these things. Read Emerson; come up into the overlife, and discard both hope and fear.

So much for hard sense. And now, Presto, change!-and enter Mr. Taft with his train of vanities, and, prominent in that train, myself. I have been getting paler every day since I came here, and yesterday I invested the whole amount of ten cents in rooge-how do you spell it?—r-u-ge?—r-u-s-h-e?-r-o-g-u-e? Well, take your choice of these spells, and if you don't get the right one it is your bad spelling, not mine. Now, this roo-truck just sets me up and makes my looking-glass a greater attraction than ever.

OH, I HAVE A THOUGHT! Quicksilver is a little world by itself, and revolves on its own axis. Quicksilver made into mirrors demands more quicksilver made into vermilion; and vermilion demands more mirrors. Here is perpetual motion at last, turning on the pivot of woman's vanity, and promising to endure forever.

But, to go back before this last world was discovered, if I am half as handsome as I think I am, I don't see how Mr. Taft can resist me. Now, listen to this description: My hair is a | lovely auburn. I assisted it in its transmogrification from its original mud color by a little preparation known to the initiated. It is cut off in front, and tortured into crinkles that fall low on my "alabaster brow." My lovely eyes, so soft and yet so bright, so liquid in their light, like stars that gem the night, look out from beneath this frizzled mass like the innocent peepers of a poodle dog. My features, though

somewhat irregular, harmonize as a whole, and the result stands before you-a perfect creation, an unexceptionable piece of loveliness, a cameo struck whole from the great divine source of Beauty. So much for me.

Now, if people cannot see how beautiful I am it is their loss, not mine. "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder;" and if the beholder is blind, does that mar the fact? Therefore, I warn you against that little touch of sarcasm in the laugh with which you greet this description, madam, lest you fix upon yourself the imputation-devoid of taste.

I stopped this letter here yesterday, for an accident happened to my darling. No-a darling, though not mine. He slipped on the steps and sprained his ankle. It is an awful sprain, almost a fracture. I heard his quick step past my door; then I heard him fall and ran to him. He was holding on to the banisters, trying to get up stairs when I saw him. I made a swoop downward, like a hawk on a June-bug, and "lit" close by him. He smiled when he saw me, and as I caught him about the waist he laid his arm over my shoulder and yielded to my assistance. But it was no use; he could not bear any weight on the injured limb, and I had to call help and have him carried up to his His pain was intolerable. In spite of his evident self-control, the groans trembled through his white lips. My heart was torn at the sight. I sent for a doctor, and then I took off his shoe and stocking, and pressed and chafed his delicate white foot and ankle-how lovingly and tenderly, he may never know. But it did him good; his face relaxed, and his breath came easier.

room.

Say, Liz, I don't believe he wears more than No. 4 shoes. I wear No. 5 myself, though I never owned it before. The two things I have lied about with unswerving persistence and mulish perversity are my age and the size of my feet, and I don't believe it is in the power of the gospel to save me on these points. There is no doubt but the first thing I shall do when I enter the next world will be to order a pair of shoes too small for me, and exchange them with the under-clerk surreptitiously. Now, I always hated small feet in men, until I saw and handled this beautiful little foot of Mr. Taft's; and then my ideas underwent a change. And why not, even on rational principles, leaving my love-lorn condition out of the question. Beauty is beauty wherever you find it. So I wipe out another prejudice, and am all the more free for it.

Since I wrote you before I think I have made sne progress in the pursuit of Mr. Taft's heart.

I don't know, but I think he is more familiar with me, though familiar is too strong a word. A few days ago I was in his room, and he began asking me questions as usual, and they took a personal turn. He asked how long I had been in the city?-where I came from?was I Mrs. or Miss Ellis?

"And so you have been married?" he said. "Yes."

"And have had children.” "Yes."

"Are they living?"

do?"

"Borrowed one of a neighbor."

"Do you know what I think of those children?"

"No."

"I think they were all borrowed, Mrs. Ellis." And then he took up his pen and began to write one of those interminable briefs. Why briefs, in the name of Moses? This was a hint for me to leave, and, as a natural consequence, I didn't want to. I was standing all this time, and he was sitting at his desk. He wrote pages, and still I stood there. Presently he

looked up, and said:

"I don't refer to the tombstone; I refer to the

bill."

“Oh, yes, the bill for the tombstone was very large."

"Drop the tombstone, and tell me about the bill for the divorce. I am more interested in that."

"Ah! That was a different bill altogether. His name is Bill Wilson. He is the man my husband was jealous of."

"That was before he died." "No, afterwards."

"Mrs. Ellis, you can be excused."

"My name is not Mrs. Ellis; at least, not

"Fifteen years."

"Ah! and how many children had you?" "One."

her own name again?”

"As a rule, madam, she takes some other person's-Bill Wilson's, for instance."

Then, Liz, he rose to his feet, and bowed, to

"Bereaved indeed, Mr. Taft. Six children could have filled my heart no more perfectly than did my one little daughter that died so young."

upon I walked round the desk, and sat down by him, just as he was reseating himself. And now, mark my words, I saw an unmistakable flash of pleasure in his face, but he stifled it instantly, and turned toward me, cold and impassive.

In the meantime, I was making myself quite comfortable. I put my feet on the rungs of

"I am a widow."

"Is your husband dead ?"

"Yes; and glad of it."

"You or your husband?"

chair, adjusted my overskirt, and smiled on him bewitchingly. Don't dock that word of one particle of its strength. I mean it. I was in my most dare-devil mood, and did not care where it led.

Truly, the allurements of the chase are wonderful. Heigh, ho, tantivy! Put in the yelping of the dogs, the tooting of the horns, the

"Did he treat you badly?"

"Horribly."

"And you?"

little hare almost run down, and you have the situation.

Oh, men! men! if you knew as much about women as I do, your power would be unlimited.

"Did you sue him for a divorce?"

"No, he sued me."

"On what complaint?"

"That I failed to provide for him." "And he got a divorce on that ground?" "He might have done it if he had not died." "And where is he now?"

"In Arizona working a gold mine." "What did your divorce cost you?" "Nothing as yet; I am to pay the bill when I marry again.”

"What bill."

"For the tombstone." "Is it a large one?"

of any male biped that lives. Could I be so base as to give away my own sex by showing our enemies that their power lies in their indifference to us?

I am afraid of making my letter too long by recounting any further conversation with Mr. Taft. It lasted an hour; it was sensible and sincere on both sides. As I got up to leave the room, he raised with me, giving me his hand, and so we walked, still holding hands, to the door, where he bowed me out, with the rarest smile that ever illuminated a face.

I wish I could go and take care of him as he lies in the next room suffering, but I dare not do it.