Husks. Marion Harland

up lustre to the eye and warm color to the cheek. To a soul sickening of the glare and perfume of the artificial life to which she was confined, the roughest and wildest aspects of nature were a welcome change.

      I remember laughing heartily, as I doubt not you did also, dear reader, if you saw it, at a cut which appeared several years ago in the Punch department of "Harper's Magazine." A "wee toddler," perhaps four years old, with a most lack-a-daisical expression upon her chubby visage, accosts her grandmother after this fashion: "I am tired of life, grandmamma! The world is hollow, and my doll is stuffed with sawdust, and if you please, ma'am, I should like to go to a nunnery!"

      Yet, that there are natures upon which the feeling of emptiness and longing herein burlesqued seizes in mere babyhood is sadly true. And what wonder? From their cradles, hundreds of children, in our so-called better classes, are fed upon husks. A superficial education, in which all that is not showy accomplishment is so dry and uninviting that the student has little disposition to seek further for the rich kernel, the strong meat of knowledge, is the preparatory course to a premature introduction into the world, to many the only phase of life they are permitted to see, a scene where all is flash and froth, empty bubbles of prizes, chased by men and women with empty heads, and oh, how often empty, aching hearts! Outside principles, outside affections, outside smiles, and most pitiable of all, outside piety! Penury of heart and stomach at home; abroad a parade of reckless extravagance and ostentatious profession of fine feeling and liberal sentiments!

      "Woe," cried the preacher, "to them that make haste to be rich!" If he had lived in our day, in what biting terms of reprobation and contempt would he have declaimed against the insane ambition of those who forego the solid comforts of judicious expenditure of a moderate income would afford; spurn the holy quiet of domestic joys—neglect soul with heart culture—in their haste to seem rich, when Providence has seen that wealth is not to be desired for them! Out upon the disgusting, indecent race and scramble! The worship of the golden calf is bad enough, but when this bestial idolatry rises to such a pitch of fanaticism, that in thousands of households copies in pinchbeck and plated-ware are set up and served, the spectacle is too monstrous in its abomination! This it is that crowds our counting-rooms with bankrupts and our state-prisons with defaulters; that is fast turning our ball-rooms and other places of fashionable rendezvous into vile caricatures of foreign courts, foreign manners, and foreign vices; while the people we ape—our chosen models and exemplars—hold their side in inextinguishable laughter at the grave absurdity of our laborious imitation. It is no cause for marvel that, in just retribution, there should be sent a panic-earthquake, every three years, to shake men to their senses.

      Such was the atmosphere in which Sarah Hunt had always lived. In the code subscribed to by her mother, and the many who lived and felt and panted and pushed as she did for social distinction, nothing was of real, absolute value except the hard cash. Gold and silver were facts. All things else were comparative in use and worth. The garment which, last winter, no lady felt dressed without, was an obsolete horror this season. The pattern of curtains and furniture that nearly drove the fortunate purchaser wild with delight, three years back, was now only fit for the auction room. In vain might the poor depleted husband plead for and extol their beauties. The fiat of fashion had gone forth, and his better half seasoned his food with lamentations, and moistened her pillow with tears until she carried her point. We have intimated that Sarah was a peculiar girl. Whence she derived her vigorous intellect; her strong, original turn of thought; her deep heart, was a puzzle to those who knew her parents. The mother was energetic, the father sensible, but both were commonplace, and followed, like industrious puppets, in the wake of others. They were pleased that Sarah brought home all the prizes offered at school, and both considered that she gained a right, by these victories, to pursue her studies at home, provided she did not obtrude her singular views and tastes upon other people. Mrs. Hunt sighed, frequently and loudly, in her presence, that her genius had not been for shell, or bead, or worsted work, instead of for reading volumes, that did not even decorate the show book-case in the library.

      "If you must have so many books, why don't you pick out them with the tasty bindings?" she had asked her daughter more than once. "And I wish you would paint some bright, lively pictures, that would look handsome on the walls, instead of those queer men and women and cloudy things you have got upstairs. I'd have 'em framed right away, and be real proud to tell who done them."

      Sarah remained proof against such hints and temptation, and, shrinking more and more from the uncongenial whirl around her, she turned her eager, restless spirit into her secret, inner life, where, at times, it was flattered into content by the idealities upon which it was fed; at others, ramped and raved, like any other chained wild thing. The sweetest drop of pleasure she had tasted for many a day was the thrill she experienced when the forlorn object she had rescued from the power of the storm stood before her, decently and comfortably clad. The rash confidence she had reposed in so suspicious a stranger was the outgoing of a heart too noble and true in every impulse to pause, for a moment, to speculate upon the chances of another's good or bad faith. The great world of the confessedly poor was an unknown field to her—one she longed to explore. Her footsteps loitered more often near the entrance of some narrow, reeking street or alley, down which she had promised her mother not to go, than on the spacious pave, where over-dressed women and foppish men halted at, and hung around bewitching shop windows. She wondered how such throngs of breathing beings contrived to exist in those fetid, cramped quarters; how they lived, spoke, acted, felt. The great tie of human brotherhood became daily more tense, as she pondered these things in her heart.

      On this particular day, as she sat, silent and thoughtful, at her needle, the chit-chat of her companions less heeded than the continual dropping of the rain without, the wail of the shivering wanderer caused a painful vibration through every nerve. The deed was done! the experiment was tried. She was ashamed that an event so trivial held her eyes waking, far into the night. At least, she said to herself, she would not be without a lesson of some kind; would learn whether deceit and falsehood prevailed in the lowest, as well as the higher ranks of society. If, as she still strove to believe would be the case, the child returned the borrowed property, she would make use of her, as the means of entering upon a new sphere of research and action. After so complete a refutation of her theories respecting the utter corruption of all people, who had not enough to eat and to wear, her mother could not withhold her consent to her petition that she might become a lay-missionary—a present relief committee to a small portion of the suffering, toiling, ill-paid masses. She would then have a work to do—something to call out energy and engage feeling in healthy exercise—and soothed by the romantic vision, she fell asleep with a smile upon her lips.

      The morning dawned between breaking clouds, that soon left the sky clear and bright. All through the day Sarah watched for her visitor of the preceding day—watched with nervousness she could not wholly conceal, from morn to night, for two, three days—for a week. Then she looked no longer while at home; her question, at entering the house, after a drive or walk, ceased to be, "Has any thing been left for me?" So palpable was her disappointment that her father forbore to make any allusion to her loss, and Lucy, albeit she was somewhat obtuse to the finer points of her sister's character, good-naturedly interposed to change the subject when her mother sought to improve the incident to her daughter's edification and future profit. Mr. Hunt was right in supposing that the "unsophisticated girl" had learned something. Whether she were happier or better for the lesson thus acquired was another thing.

      Once again Sarah had an opportunity for speech with her delinquent protege. Two months later she was passing through a by-street in a mean neighborhood, very far up town, in her morning ramble, when her progress was arrested, for an instant, by two boys, who ran out of an alley across the walk. One overtook the other just in front of the lady, and catching him by his ragged collar, threw him down.

      "That's right! beat him well! I'll help!" screeched a girl, rushing out of the court whence they had come.

      Grinning with delight, she flung herself upon the prostrate form and commenced a vigorous assault, accompanied by language alike foul and profane.

      Sarah recognized her instantly, and while she paused in mingled amazement and anger, the child looked up and saw her. In a twinkling she relinquished her grip of the boy's hair—jumped up and sped back into the dirty alley, with