quarter of his income for rent; and what kind | bands from the pages of trashy novels, and reof a house will one quarter of fifteen hundred signed—at least, in their dreams-their maiden dollars procure in a city like ours? Nay, how liberty to some dashing Alphonso for a villa, a hard it is to procure, for thrice three hundred carriage, and all the attendant elegances. Perdollars, a house with what are called the mod-haps those who are themselves penniless are ern conveniences! Then there is the matter of sometimes most exacting of fortune, and least servants; and the most moderate standard of disposed to prolong the hard livelihood which gentility in our towns insists upon having at they by experience know too well. Plain figures least one servant, while our city habits pre- from the arithmetic might be more suggestive scribe from two to five or six servants, the stand- than the tropes of romance. The simplest stateard number being three in well-to-do families. ments of the average yield of industrious labor We are willing to astonish the more luxurious and enterprise would astonish many of our ambiportion of our readers by confessing at once that tious republican maidens, and their often more we write more for the common lot than for the ambitious mammas, more than the trumpet of favored few, and that the boys for whose future judgment, and it would be seen that the standwe are most solicitous are those who are in our ard of dependence is generally based upon expublic schools, and who represent the average ceptional luck, and not upon regular industry. condition of the American people. Of our mill-Begin with the returns of common labor, which ions of school-boys, thousands are destined to gives the unit from which calculation should fame or fortune; but such is not the general start. A hard-working man, not master of a lot, and not only the largest but the most im-regular trade, is highly favored, either in city portant class can not be expected to rise above or country, if he earns, on an average of workthe necessity of frugal living, while in the out- ing days, a dollar a day, or three hundred dolset the greater proportion of the few who rise to lars a year; while an accomplished mechanic, wealth are obliged to practice great frugality. not master of a shop, is favored if he gains half We may consider it, then, the almost universal a dollar a day more, or four hundred and fifty condition of our sons that they ought to begin dollars a year, throughout all times and all life in a very modest way, and if they marry as weather. A capable clerk can not expect durearly as the best wisdom and morality dictate ing his first years of service much more; and they must at once put down their foot against probably an offer of five hundred dollars salary the prevalent social ostentation. The first years would bring at this time more candidates for a of married life do much to decide the whole fu- tolerable clerkship, demanding considerable gifts ture of the family; and if a man finds himself of address and penmanship, than the advertiser committed to a style of expenditure beyond his could examine in a week. The smaller kinds means he is embarrassed, and enfeebled, and of retail business yield very scanty incomesdispirited at the very time when he ought to be and these, too, are very precarious, especially in gaining courage, health, and means for the so- the dry-goods trade; so that while they tempt ber years that are coming. Here, surely, is a showy tastes they impose very close limitations most vital point in the welfare of our sons-the of expense. The professions that require schoneed of such an adjustment of our household lastic education offer a few pecuniary prizes, but habits as to bring a reasonably early marriage present a very low average reward. A good within the mark of moderate expenditure. The teacher is highly favored who is sure of Mr. boarding-house and the hotel are the too ready Punch's three hundred pounds a year; and in resort in this need; but while their frugality to the country towns half that sum is often eagerthe purse is more than doubtful, their waste of ly welcomed. Lawyers and doctors do not genheart and mind is beyond all question, and our erally at first earn their bread and rent, and American life is often wounded to the vitals by must trust to some collateral resources from the consequent breaking down of domestic qui- parents or wives, or teaching or writing, to keep etude, privacy, and industry. The true anti- soul and body together. Our clergy in the coundote must be found in simpler and more repub-try towns do not average more than six hundred lican methods of housekeeping, that shall secure due comfort and refinement without wreck of health and competence. Neat homes for small families are the very first want in our towns and cities; and with their rise we need the growth, especially on the part of our young women, of more reasonable notions of social respectability. As society now is, our young women form their standard of expectation upon exceptional cases; and even if they do not expect to have decided ly rich husbands, they are not content to look forward to the moderate income that most kinds of regular industry bring. A little plain figuring might, perhaps, be of great use to the thousands of taper-fingered, narrow-chested, lily-cheeked girls who have selected their husVOL. XVII.-No. 97.-E

dollars a year; and the few who, in cities, have salaries of four, five, or even six thousand dollars, are burdened by a rate of conventional expenditure that keeps them often without a dollar of surplus. Leaving out of account a very few lawyers, and still fewer physicians, the only class of men who can expect large incomes from their business are successful merchants; and it is to. them that we may justly ascribe the origin of the prevalent standard of social ostentation. Our successful merchants are our millionaires, or else those who expend the income of millions of dollars without any corresponding capital. The latter, probably, have done more than any other class to corrupt our republican principles, and our most frequent and dangerous prodigal.

ity may be ascribed to the great number of mer- | better time-and its coming will inaugurate a chants who are doing a large business mainly new day for our sons, by giving them the true on credit, and who regulate their expenses upon motive for their work and the true companionthe standard of their most lucrative years. ship for their household. Our America has They do not mean to be extravagant or dishon- many questions to settle, but none is more imest-for we regard our merchants as generally portant than this: When shall our sons seek quite honorable in their purposes-but they are the true honor in the best usefulness, and when too often under a fatal hallucination by mistak- shall the power of woman help them in the ing the exception for the rule, and learning seeking? We might choose many samples of their sad error in the fatal years of revulsion American skill and enterprise to prove our proand shipwreck. The great majority of businesses gress in civilization, but the best proof must be can claim but very moderate gains in the aver- the best specimen of our standard American age balances of a twenty years' operation; and life. The fastest ship, the best reaping-mahe may be set down as a very fortunate man, in chine, the most perfect photograph, the most any business, who for twenty years supports his deadly revolver, or the most voluble Congressfamily modestly, educates his children well, pays man, would be poor trifles to send to some great his debts, and lays up a thousand dollars year- World's Fair compared with the model republicly. Such a moderate accumulation may, to an home in which a worthy youth and maiden many, seem contemptible, but there are thou- from our public schools have mated hearts and sands who have called it contemptible who hands, and found all the substantial blessings would think themselves vastly favored now if of life, with Heaven's smile, in the reward of they could pay their debts and call a single patient and honorable industry, whether more thousand dollars their own. or less than three hundred pounds a year.

The sober truth is that we are wrong in our whole standard of social expectation, and that we ought to open our eyes to the simple facts, and train our sons to adjust their methods by the rule and not by the exception. We are well aware that young blood does not relish restraint, and that it is far harder to stop a fast youth from running the wrong way than it is to push him forward in the right way. It is precisely for this very reason that we hope for a better day for our Young America, whether it walks in petticoats or pantaloons. We do not bélieve much in mere negations, and young people are not much bettered by being scolded and kept down. The way to improve them is to carry the war into the enemy's country, and enlist the warmth of young blood in the bold and aggressive affirmation of the true republican principles in their sober sense, honest frugality, stout industry, and manly independence. We hope to see the true Young America rising from our schools, homes, and churches, and supplanting the hideous caricatures that now so often pass for the real likeness. We hope to see hosts of young men among us who are more proud of frugal habits sustained by honest and intelligent labor, than of prodigality pampered by gambling, adventure, or enslaving debt. We hope to see hosts of young women who are more eager to be wives of worthy young fellows whom they can love and help on in the world by good economy and womanly affectionateness than to sell themselves to churlishness or decrepitude, and sacrifice heart and soul to luxury and pretension. The education that shall train such young men and young women will be quite startling to our regiments of street and parlor gentry who pride themselves on their elegance and uselessness; but it will be found in the end that the best refinement, as well as the best sense, is with the new movement, and true taste will rise as vulgar ostentation and laziness fall.

We look anxiously for the coming of this

Esther Bennet and Philip Grant looked into each other's eyes.

She was very unlovely in looks. Her face was strikingly plain, without one ray of beauty to lighten it up. It was a pale, sallow face, thin, and with large, black eyes, fierce, burning, without the softness we like to see in a woman's eye. The forehead was low, the hair black and coarse, the mouth not small, the lips almost colorless. There was no tender light in the eyes, no winning smile about the mouth to make one forget she was not beautiful. But there was a painful expression about the compressed lips, a contraction of the brow, a restless impatience in the eyes, showing that she suffered, had suffered much, and yet was not softened and made better by the pain.

Philip Grant was a handsome man. I think any one would have called him so, even one who disliked the cold, hard look of the blue eye, and the sensual expression of the full, red lip. The hair, of a light chestnut shade, was wavy and luxuriant, clustering around a high, white brow; the eyes of a deep blue; and these, with his regular features, the dainty mustache upon his curling upper lip, a fine figure, small, well-shaped hand and foot, made him what the world calls a handsome man.

And so the two looked at each other for the first time. Esther Bennet, poor, unattractive in face and form, with no power to charm others to love her, and Philip Grant, the rich, handsome, graceful man, whose dark eyes were now searching her plain face.

For a moment they stood silent in those brightly-lighted, crowded rooms, where the gayest and merriest of Mrs. Leyton's friends were gathered at her invitation. Esther was looking, in her

quick, impatient way, at the one before her, as she thought, "Why is he here? I can not talk to him. I wish they had not brought him to me. I will talk to no one. I was only invited as a deed of charity." He was looking into her eyes very quietly, with a scarcely defined smile curling his lip, as he thought, "I am reading you, Miss Bennet. You will be a curious study, and I will while away my leisure hours in pursuing it."

At length Esther spoke, while her hands clasped each other nervously:

"I do not know why your aunt brought you to me, Mr. Grant. I am not well to-night, am very stupid, and can not talk."

"Esther, do you love me?"

She spoke no answer to that low, earnest voice, but her love, her passionate woman's love, shone in her eyes, lighted up her plain face till it was as the face of an angel, so radiant, glorified, and he drew her to his heart, and they were very still.

That night Esther stood alone in her little dreary room, and, with hands clasped tightly over her fast-beating heart to still its throbbing, she thought of the glorious future before her. "He is mine, mine!" she said. "No power

on earth can take him from me. His lips have pressed my forehead, his arms have clasped me to his heart. Philip, my noble, beautiful Phil

"I asked her to bring me, Miss Bennet," he ip! God bless him!" Yes, she said "God said, quietly.

bless him!" but in her heart she acknowledged

Esther looked at him with a puzzled expres- no other God than Philip Grant. sion. He went on:

"I had grown so weary of listening to this insipid small talk, and I looked around for a face which promised me something better. Yours did so."

"You are mistaken," Esther said, quickly, and with an impatient wave of her hand. "I can not talk to you."

"Allow me to judge of that, Miss Bennet. And now let us talk of something else. Shall we walk to that window, where there is just enough moonlight stealing in to make us forget the gayety and gaslight, and have a quiet talk?"

She took his proffered arm, and their "quiet talk" grew eager and earnest as they stood together in the moonlight. And Esther Bennet left the room that night feeling that at length she had found a spirit in unison with her own; for Philip Grant, with his ready insight into character, had easily read thoughts she had never dared express, and led her on to speak of them, looking sympathy with his dark eyes as she talked, answering her in low, earnest tones, till her whole heart thanked him.

Day after day went by, and Esther met Philip Grant again and again, and her heart went, fragment by fragment, into his possession. She loved him-loved with all the passionate earnestness of her fierce, ungoverned nature. Weak and

The bright summer days went by, the chilly autumn came on, but still it was mid-summer in Esther Bennet's heart.

"It seems strange, strange," she said to Philip, one day, "that I should be so very happy. I never thought to be."

"And are you so happy?" he asked.

She looked up into his face-her eyes were full of eager joy, her lips tremulous with exceeding happiness, as she said, "God keep you always as happy as I am now!"

He stooped and kissed her forehead, and, as he did so, she said, suddenly,

"Why do you love me, Philip? I can not understand it. I have no beauty, no grace, no winning ways. Why do you love me?"

"I

"Not for your beauty, Esther," he said, with an amused smile which she did not see. think I love you because of your loving. There are few who can love as you do-with such passion and fervor. I like such worshiping, selfforgetting love;" and his eye flashed.

She cared not that he loved her only for her love of him, but said, eagerly, "You do not know all my love, Philip. You can never know it all."

And then she poured forth eager, burning words-her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, her thin hands trembling, as she told her love. But the winter came at last.

ly down upon him.

sickly from childhood, she had always been a The snow was falling quietly one chilly evensufferer. An orphan, with but a small amounting, when Philip Grant came to Esther's home. of money left by her parents for her support; She met him at the door, drew him in from the friendless and almost unknown, she had grown cold snow to a bright room filled with the ruddy up neglected, misanthropical, and unhappy. glow of a cheerful fire, and drawing the largest, Now a whole age of happiness seemed to lie easiest chair near the hearth, she made him sit glowing before her, as she listened to the low-in it, while she stood by his side looking proudbreathed words of Philip Grant, and looked into his love-lit eyes. She lived but in the intense love which burned in her heart; it was her breath, her life. She worshiped, and would have no God save the one she now knelt to. Philip came daily to see her, and she was always happy. So dark had been her life hitherto that this brightness almost dazzled her unaccustomed eyes. And one evening, as she sat by Philip's side, he took her willing hands in his, and, looking down into her face, said ·

The snow had silvered his hair, and she was brushing it away, her fingers nestling lovingly among his fair locks, when he said,

"Esther, I am going away to-morrow." She started, and said, "Going away! When will you come back to me?"

For a minute he was silent, while their eyes rested on each other's; then he said, firmly, "Never."

She bent over him and looked into his face.

"Yes, I will remember you, Philip Grant, move till the waiter reappeared with the mesand God will remember you too."