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Picture and letter had arrived three days before, and yet the answer to the latter lay in process of construction upon the flap of the old-fashioned bookcase in the window corner. Perhaps the cause for the delay was more in the fact that both picture and letter, though relating to the First Cause, had not come directly from him, but from his sister. She had been a school friend of Miss Keith’s, who occasionally came to visit her and who was now living in Boston, having become the third wife of some one connected in a humble capacity with a free library in the city where the State-house dome seeks to rival Minerva’s helmet, and whose streets ever coil in and out as if in classic emulation of Medusa’s locks.

Taking the letter from under the clock, Miss Keith went to the window and re-read it for the twentieth time.

“October 10, 19—.

“My dear Friend:

“It is only during the past year, since I have been living within reach and under the privilege and influence of all that is inspiring to one of my aspirations, that I have realized how lonely your life must be upon that farm, where your only intimate associates are animals, feathered and otherwise, and evening, instead of becoming as it is with me the period of self-culture in the society of a loyal male companion, is too often a period of premature somnolence and apathy.