to serve.

Third. The spread of the idea and the work done by exchanges and other organizations for the benefit of womankind and, of course, mankind, as well. Fourth.-The heretofore unknown increase in the number of such avenues open to women.

Fifth. The lack of mutual knowledge of these methods and what has been accomplished by them.

Sixth. A recognition of the lack of a common channel of communication between those interested, and the necessity of establishing such a channel. Seventh.-A dissemination of knowledge in regard to the tendency of the development of the idea of making better, brighter and happier homes.

Eighth.-To impress upon the public mind the fact that so many homes are burdened with non-producing members who would be more independent, happier and useful if earning their own living than eating the bread of idleness.

Ninth. To show the possibilities of a way being open for the accomplishment of the object mentioned in number Eight.

Tenth.-To announce and maintain the fact that GOOD HOUSEKEEPING is a journal chiefly of interest to women, and women's work, and the returns for such work. The avowed purpose of the journal is explained in its sub-titles "In the Interests of the Higher Life of the Household" and "For the Homes of the World," and GOOD HOUSEKEEPING is eminently the proper channel for communication of all interests in the noble work under discussion.

A BUSINESS WOMAN.

Nothing in this miracle-working nineteenth century, each year of which holds a progress equivalent to fifty of those that have preceded it, is more wonderful than the utter change of feeling as to what women may or may not do. There is no present need of seeking the reasons for this change of feeling, better defined at some points than others, but leavening the lump in all directions. Insensibly but steadily the new order of training has made its way till in every profession and skilled trade open to women, one finds them at work with a zeal, a skill, a fidelity and conscientiousness, that mean the utmost service for the wages given. There are thousands of these women demonstrating daily that woman's work need be no less efficient than man's, and may even, because of keener conscience, exceed it in value. Their place is made. They have proved beyond question, capacity and all needed qualities for success, and their number's grow and will grow from year to year. This is the skilled army of workers, marching on with such unison as one has watched in the movement of well-drilled regiments, whose swing as they time it to the music urging them forward, is as that of one. But as in the rear of this drilled, disciplined, faithful power, followed always another army, a miscellaneous mass, made up of wandering sutlers, stragglers unable to keep up and lagging farther and farther behind, and "bummers" whose mission was simply to live on all alike, so is it with the industrial army. The "bummer" element is of the slightest, but the stragglers are legion, and as the army swells, their number grows in even greater proportion. Eager for battle and fearless of wound or disaster, they revolt at drill while demanding the wage and the honor of the soldier who has endured both, and rail at any who deny their right. Let us drop the figure which has served its turn, and ask what constitutes the real business woman? The word itself carries a suggestion of hardness. There is a lurking conviction that the woman who owns it is necessarily shorn of some of the qualities least rightfully parted with, and that the loss is irreparable.

"Don't think I am an idiot," said a particularly sensible and refined little woman to me the other day. "You will I dare say, when I tell you that I have almost a terror of my girls taking up some of the lines of self-support that are open to them. They must earn their living, for their father's health will never let him work again as he worked while they were growing. One of them is bent upon going into the same business as his, and that is what a boy would have done of course. But if she cultivates the keenness and hardness that seem necessary in any business life, she loses all that appears to me most essential in one who will be a mother some day I hope, and who must have gentleness and sympathy and unending patience if the children are to have the development they need. It is not that I object to business as a whole, but its present aspects are so full of fraud and scheming and all that is most detestable in private character, that, as I tell you, I am in terror for the effect on the women who enter its ranks. I want to believe that this is purely a transition time; that women are working now only to demonstrate the mistakes of the past concerning them, and in some happier future, near, I hope, the old order may come again or a better one and this sharp, bitter struggle cease. There seems something debasing in business in its sense of trade."

Here is the objection felt by many a sensitive spirit and with more reason than is often admitted. With its bearings we shall have more to do. But setting aside the special phase involved there is for the ordinary business woman, a healthful rather than unwholesome effect for character. One who deals much with women of all orders, realizes with more and more distinctness that the vital wrong in the training of girls is want of thoroughness. It is this tendency that even the most gifted and best educated have to fight in themselves. It is a national as well as a womanly defect, and that it is so, is the reason why many of the skilled

trades are given over to foreigners who are forced in childhood to submit to a training absolutely unknown to the American child. The amount of drill, the constant repetition to which the German submits without question, has had till now no counterpart in our system of education, its need having but very recently become plain. We are quick and keen. Assimilation is so swift that it passes for training, and till the demand for sustained effort and the drill that makes such effort possible is made, the superficial fare as well as the trained. But it has shown itself as necessary even to the most sceptical, that for the woman who would earn a fair wage, there must be no falling back upon the fact that she is a woman and therefore to be excused for small lapses as to puncThe one redeeming feature in tuality and general thoroughness. the present rush of young girls into shops of all orders is the fact that often their first lessons in rigid punctuality come from the experience, even the fine system with all its petty injustices being one means to this end. Accuracy, dispatch, punctuality, order; there is not one of these traits that is not a necessity in every home, nor a life that would not be the better for owning them, and for the great majority of women, there is no thought in any education offered to them, of developing these capacities, or demanding that every atom of work done shall have these characteristics. On the contrary, one feels at times that there is a premium on exactly the opposite traits and a woman is counted less womanly who owns them. Lovingness is believed to cover all lapses of intelligence, and even rational men and women look indulgently on all failures outside the business field as, on the whole, legitimate. To a pretty woman all things are forgiven, is the creed of the majority, happily changing under the new dispensation. Till

the sterner traits are cultivated in both men and women, the loose methods of judgment will remain current. Business life with its demands is at present the best school, since homes deny practically that the need exists. Yet from how many homes comes the cry, "How shall we earn, and why is it that nothing succeeds that we undertake."

On the desk at my side lies a pile of letters all of the same general tenor. The writers want paying work and they want it at once, often with sad, sore reason. But running through most of them is the fatal looseness that characterizes the utterly untrained mind, and in some cases where the letters are the reply to questions as to capability, strong indignation that it should be questioned.

"I can turn my hand to anything," writes one, "and I ought to be able to succeed in any business I could get the chance to enter. Doing a thing is training enough for any woman with a grain of sense."

Quite true, but for so many the grain was omitted, that it is a dangerous rule warranted not to work save in exceptional cases. The business standard in its most rigid sense, is the present essential for all women whether students or in trades, and its demand will bring about a new standard among women. For the intelligent, it is already there. For the non-intelligent it is growing. Higher ideals will not be smirched by the addition of these more ordinary virtues. Rather they will have larger scope. Faithful ness in petty things is simply training for the meeting of sudden emergency, and each humdrum virtue has at its heart, the germ of the larger, more shining form, aspiration toward which, is part of woman's life. In the nature of things the woman who has best mastered every detail and obligation of business has, if she carries the lesson into daily life, gained rather than lost, and each.woman who does this makes the way clearer for those who must follow.

THE DRESS OF BUSINESS WOMEN.

It has been so ingrained in the minds of women that dress reform was practically impossible, that they have submitted to inconveniences that would unbalance the strongest-minded man. To revolt meant only to be called a crank, a word of terror to the general ear, and only the final disappearance of the pocket stirred revolt. That the pocket grew smaller and more inaccessible with every season, was regarded as only a portion of the needed discipline, but as the announcement came that no dress could hang properly which contained one, even the most patient refused longer submission to tyrannous edict. The matter is at last receiving the serious attention which it deserves and requires, and though it is not yet certain that the suggestion in the little article which follows could be carried out in full detail, it is at least worth while to consider them. Various clubs and societies of working girls in New York have already adopted the blouse-waist and straightgathered skirt as a working uniform, and a business woman, who has been interviewed, said recently:

"A friend of mine, just home from Paris, is very much interested in something she saw there in the way of a reformed dress for business women. There is no doubt that some reform in that direction must and will come, though it is slow, because women are not only very conservative, but very much afraid of wearing anything that makes them conspicuous or ridiculous. It is not women they are afraid of so much as the men, who, ever since the days of Jeremiah the prophet, have been inveighing against the follies of women's dress, but who are the first to jeer at and persecute her if she dare attempt to emancipate herself from those follies in any way. Now, in my own case, for example, my work requires that I should be out of doors a great deal, no matter what the state of the weather may be.

"My condition when it storms is positively pitiable. I must hold up my umbrella, grasp my skirts with one hand to try to keep them out of the wet-which, by the way, never does succeed in keeping them out of it entirely-and whatever books, papers or parcels I may have to carry must be tucked insecurely under the arm. I have passed men plodding

about in the rain and almost wept from envy. Their trousers are turned up quite out of the danger of wet, their long Mackintoshes have deep pockets that will hold all their parcels and papers, and they have both hands free for their umbrellas, and they can step into their office, lay aside their outside wraps and be as neat and dry as when they left home. Let any woman walk through a windy rain and see if she can say the same thing when she arrives at her destination.

"The new French dress which my friend saw at Paris seems to me the best suggestion I have heard yet. The trouble has been to find something that would, while being convenient, be also graceful and modest, and this seems to come near it. It is modeled on the uniform of the Zouave regiments and consists of trousers and gaiters-the neatest thing, by the way, for walking that has ever been invented. This makes no exposure of the person at all, while leaving the limbs perfectly free. Over it is a skirt that comes almost to the ankle, but it is only slightly gathered and is slit up on each side to the hip, so that while it answers all purposes of modesty it does not interfere in the least with locomotion. The waist can be either a blouse with a sash, or a waistcoat and coat with plenty of pockets. I hear that a number of French women who manage their own farms or have work to do out of doors have adopted it and find it both comfortable and becoming. Mme. Dieulafoy, the great explorer, who wears an entire male costume on her travels, is a great admirer of this new dress, and says it is, she thinks, the solution of the problem of a working dress for working women."

OUR CORRESPONDENTS.

Already an open letter to the readers of GOOD HousekeepING has shaped itself, and must soon take form; perhaps even, in printers' phrase, “be kept standing," to the women characterized in the opening number of this department as vague." Dear souls! your needs are as imperative as those of the women who know how to come to the point at once, but till you have specified either what you can, or what you think you can do, it is impossible to make a suggestion. One of these women, who evidently thinks, and who yet has never applied the results to her own case, writes:

There ought to be work enough and if you will tell me what I had better do, I will begin at once. I think that all this trouble about work and wages would end at once if the ballot were given, for then a woman would be as important a being as a man. As it is now, submission is her only lot. She must take what she can get. I hope you are going to make these columns for women ring with the cry for more justice. I shall not be satisfied till I know that this will be so. It is justice that women want, and when they get that, other things will take care of themselves. Please answer this where all can read."

Leaving for the present any statement of personal views in this matter, there are one or two points to be made. While it is true that the whole question of work and wages has never been more complicated, it is also true that the untrained workers are those who suffer most. The woman who has learned how to do any one thing perfectly, has full employment, and the demand for services of this nature can by no means be filled. Skilled seamstresses are required, but cannot be found, and the demand for skilled dressmakers to come to the homes of employers, is equally impossible to fill. The trades are calling for expert workers. Even the Women's Exchanges send out the same cry: "O, give us women who will do their work thoroughly!"

If slackness and inaccuracy are the distinguishing features of much that is done, is not reform necessary? "Justice" is wanted surely; but in this case it is justice toward rather than from others. There can hardly be too strong words on this point. To do the day's work half-heartedly and inefficiently is the story of many women-workers, who want full pay for indifferent work, and who fail to realize that each stroke of such labor is a stroke against the cause of women-workers as a whole. "The reward of a thing well done is to have done it." That is the first and highest return, but the money wage is as certain. It is lack of thoroughness that is at the bottom of half the troubles revealed in these letters, and to reconstruct one's methods seems the first necessity. Hard as this sounds, it is written with fullest sympathy for the struggle, and with the absolute conviction that it can be remedied by a little more thought and a determined effort at reform.

Here follows a list of congratulations. From across the continent a voice comes, well known among certain quiet workers in

"If the destruction of the poor is their poverty, it is no less certain that Solomon, to-day, would add, 'The destruction of women is their want of thoroughness.' Coming in contact, as I do, with hundreds, I am more and more impressed by this innate deficiency. There are many fine exceptions, but it is certain that lack of thoroughness is ingrained in American working-women, and must be educated out of them as fast as possible. Do everything you can to this end."

Another writes:

"Spare us! My ears ring, my head swims, from the blows I have received in the houses of my friends. We are trying to do the best we can. Give us an encouraging word, for we need it. Do all these women, who are attacking other women, do all the things they advise? Do any of them do any of them? I don't believe it. I think they simply sit down and plan to be as unpleasant as possible, in as many ways as possible, and I am sure they succeed. Do let this deparunent have some cheer in it."

This is one view, and it holds some reason. The answer may be found in a bit from the letter which came with it:

"Do not spare one of us. I have moments of thinking that a streak of idiocy is in every woman. Certainly, though I love women and have pledged my life to work for them, they drive me to the verge of lunacy with their ways. Show us up. Make us see how madly irrational we often are, and let us seek unitedly and with all energy, for some additions to common sense."

A woman, who is at work, writes:

"Here is a sonnet cut from some local paper; no name attached, but I think it fits your department, and may bring cheer to some discouraged worker :

VICTORY.

He who, believing, strongly lays his hand
Unto the work that waits for him to do,

Though men should cavil, friends should prove untrue,
Love's promises be writ on shifting sand,
And "Failure" stamped upon him like a brand-
Still in the glorious end he doth pursue

Shall find a power and victory which few,

Or none with cause less righteous, may command.

For conquest ne'er was built on the defeat
Of any man whose aim is human good;
Who fights for justice hath already won.
Before no show of loss shall be retreat,
However crossed, defamed, misunderstood,

He knows but triumph in a work well done.

Last on the list is a letter which is a story, that could be told by many women in the remote country, and which contains suggestions that may meet response from some of the readers of GOOD HOUSEKEEPING. It begins:

"I want to tell you my story, and you are welcome to use it, suppressing, of course, name and locality. Before I was twenty years old I married a young farmer, who deceived me as to his circumstances, in a general way; two years afterward I had to pay his debts. In eighteen years and a day I had fourteen living children. Who wonders I failed to manage, so that at the end of that time it took all my small fortune to satisfy our creditors; now for five years more I have tried to be a good farmer's wife. I feel so sure I am capable of doing business myselfcontinuing the business of my life in fact-that I cannot give up my scheme. Three years ago I gave my friends the information that to educate and support my girls till they are self-supporting I had decided to make a business of receiving children, too young to go to school, from their guardians. Very soon a boy whose mother is insane, was sent to me, and he is still here. I get $20 per month to care for and teach him; they clothe him. Last spring I went to Philadelphia and called on physicians, lawyers and Trust companies in reference to receiving more children; they all assured me that if I were near the city I would get more than I could receive.

"Now the great lion is the lack of ready cash. If a man should decide to go into a business, if he were known as an honorable Christian man, worthy of aid, he would have no trouble to get the necessary cash to set up his business, but a woman who seeks such aid is regarded as a wild lunatic and fails to find a loan. If I were rich I should advertise to lend, in sums of from $100 to $500, about $5.000 as an experiment, to see if it would not do good work. I have now found a place of forty acres with an old-fashioned house of thirteen rooms that would suit my purpose.

governess in Helena, Montana; she prefers this to teaching public school. Son nineteen next Xmas is also self-supporting. Daughter, seventeen, has a scholarship at the School of Design for women in Philadelphia; has finished two years of the course. Daughter, sixteen, is to go to Mrs. Rorer's cooking-school in October, to earn her tuition, etc., as a helper; then there are twin boys in their fifteenth year, ready and anxious to go to business, a girl thirteen, large for her age and a good worker at home. Then there were two babies left us. Will is nine; another went away, and our babies are five and six years old. I have a faculty for 'getting on' with all sorts of people, and for governing children. Many women raise chickens and turkeys about here and sell them for from seven to nine cents per pound in the feathers or eight to ten dressed. I have no patience with poultry, etc., but I have a conviction that in many cases, as in mine, 'the gray mare is the better horse,' and if it were not for public opinion the old sarcasm against a woman 'wearing the breeches' (which I have to contend against), many women would be successful in business, but are hampered by the masters they belong to, soul and body, who will not help them and interpose all the obstacles possible and finally, probably, appropriate the funds.

"Coöperative housekeeping is the coming mode of living I hope, yet I have taught my daughters all sorts of work and keeping of their clothes in order. I believe in manual training schools, then in specialists; that if phrenology is anything it must help our young people to make much of the one, five, or ten talents they are endowed with; that when we practice the true Christian spirit and help every one we touch to a purer, higher life, give of our own faith and hopes and courage and money and time, we may hope to se the 'good time''so long, long, long, on the way.'

46

Feeling the need myself of help and encouragement, I am anxious to do my part for others, yet it is so little I can do.

"Women all over the farming districts are prisoners of poverty as surely as in the city slums. If they possess a dollar a month to dispose of unquestioned, it is an unusual thing. Some get by hook or by crook what they want or need, but the money question is the great cause of unhappiness in every home.

"Forgive my long talk. I so wish I could see and talk with some of the stronger, far-seeing women I know only by their writings, and get their diagnosis of my special case and apply the remedy they approve. I have faith in an overruling Providence, but believe one must help themselves. I have the will for the way when it opens, but as yet I feel up against a wall that only a few hundred dollars can remove. "Bidding you God speed in your good work, I am yours most truly."

SAYINGS AND DOINGS OF WOMEN.

Both the colleges for women alone, and those which admit women, are all fuller than usual. This is so at Vassar, where every room is occupied. The new gymnasium is a favorite resort for the students. The professors of both sexes are busy as bees in all the departments.

There are many more applicants for admission to Smith College for women at Northampton, Mass., than can be accommodated. It is a melancholy fact that nearly all the professors of the gentle sex at this college are unmarried. Female students are now admitted to Wesleyan University, and there are six of them in its classes along with the young men this year.

The Women's National Industrial League of Washington has prepared a memorial to Congress asking an appropriation for a monument of Queen Isabella of Spain, the patron of Christopher Columbus.

A Woman's Directory is soon to be published in Chicago giving the names and addresses of 30,000 Chicago women who belong to various religious, benevolent and political organizations. The book was compiled for the purpose of estimating the number of women in Chicago who were interested in work not parely personal and to encourage them to a greater unity of effort.

Miss Helen Gladstone, the daughter of the Grand Old Man," who has been at the head of the movement for the higher education of women for many years, and is the Fresident of Wennham College, Cambridge, says that she is convinced that the "full cultivation of women's intellectual powers has no tendency to prevent them from properly discharging domestic duties."

At the recent session of the Alabama Press Association Miss Virginia Clay, of the Huntsville Democrat, was unanimously elected secretary of the Association. This lady is the daughter

of the Hon. G. Withers Clay, who has been in ill-health for several years. During that time his paper, the Huntsville Democrat, has been almost entirely under the management of Miss Virginia Clay and that of her sister, Miss Susie Clay. They have succeeded in increasing the subscription list and advertising patronage of the paper.

The spectacle of Professor Huxley's daughter having to go to Norway to be married ought to turn a few votes to the side of common sense when the Deceased Wife's Sister bill comes up again in Parliament.

The Woman's Club in New Orleans has a sewing department which is superintended by a Mrs. Speer and four assistants. It finds sewing for sixty five women each day who either work at the club, go out by the day or take their work home. Such a practical method of helping two classes of society-the women who sew for a living and the women who must have their sewing done for them is worthy of a more than passing thought or comment.

Miss Susanna M. Dunklee, of Newton, Mass., the first woman to be bank treasurer in the United States, with the help of a clerk, now handles $500,000 in money each year. In the 15 years of her experience she has but twice taken in a counterfeit bill-in each case a $10 one.

There are now some 9,000 women doctors in the United Statesabout one to each thirty-three of the masculine variety. Some of them have incomes exceeding $20,000 and very few fall below $1,000. They grow and thrive best in New York, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. After that comes the far West. In the South they have never got a footing, and outside of Maryland and Virginia there is not one in the length and breadth of Dixieland. Only three per cent. of graduates forswear medicine for matrimony, and of those who do one-third marry other doctors.

Miss Blanche Willis Howard of Bangor, who is now in Germany, proposes to translate her books into that language, and in order to arrange for her copyright it was necessary to prove the place of her nativity. This proved rather a complicated process. Miss Howard wrote to her father in Bangor, who attended to the matter. Victor Brett, city clerk of Bangor, first certified to the fact that Miss Howard was born in Bangor. His signature was certified to by United States Commissioner Hamlin, whose official signature was in turn certified to by Judge Webb of the United States District Court. The clerk of said court then certified to the signature of the judge, when the document was forwarded to Washington. There it was taken to Attorney General Miller, who certified to the signatures of the court officials, then it received the indorsement of Secretary Blaine of the State Department, and finally the signature of the head of the German legation.

To the Lower Wabash annual Conference of United Brethren in Christ, whose thirty-second session closed the other day, belongs the honor of giving to the church its first lady circuit rider in Miss Alva Button of Greenup, Ill. The act authorizing the innovation was passed by the session of the General Conference held last May. Only a few days ago Miss Ella Mishwanger, a graduate of the theological seminary, Dayton, Ohio, was ordained as an elder at the session of the central Illinois Conference, being the first woman ordained. At the same Conference Mrs. Elliot was also admitted. Later Mrs. Bell, wife of an itinerant preacher, was admitted to conference.. None of these were assigned to fields of labor. Miss Button is a young lady of more than average attainments, common sense and pick, and it may be added that she possesses beauty, being tall and prepossessing in appearance. She is a native of Chicago. She tied to set type in the office of an Illinois newspaper when seventeen years old and afterward became a successful school teacher. When her call to the ministry came she was a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but joined the United Brethren, owing to the similarity of their doctrine and in order to secure admission to conference" She may do all right,” said one of the older preachers until it comes to immersing some big sixfooter in a creek; the she will be deft.

One of the most striking instances of successful women is Mrs. Sarah Yewdall, the proprietor of the Providence worsted mills at Hestonville, Pa., who, though now seventy-six years old, retains in a remarkable degree the vigor and energy that enabled her to build up a large industry and make it pay. The mills were origi

nally erected by Mr. Yewdall in 1860, and he managed them until his death in 1866, caused by the explosion of a large boiler in his house. Mrs. Yewdall was over fifty years old when her husband died, and knew comparatively nothing of his business, but she had five children to support, and she did not hesitate to take the management of the mills. She made a careful study of the machinery and was rapidly building up the business, when a terrible accident happened to the mill. One of the boilers exploded, killing the engineer instantly, fatally wounding several other persons and causing a loss of over $50,000, on which there was no insurance. Mrs. Yewdall cared for the families of the victims, and set herself with renewed energy to the work of pushing the mill to the front. She is credited with turning out excellent yarns, for which there is a constant demand. Three of her sons now hold important positions in the mill, and she no longer has to give it the same attention as before.

The long discussions as to domestic service, are bearing fruit, it it having been announced in various quarters that a stock company with a capital of $50,000 has been formed, by Miss Frances Willard, Miss Kate Sanborn, Mrs. Ellen Foster and Mrs. John Logan. The intention is to found a combined training-school and intelligence office for both American and foreign girls who want to go out to service. They hope to, in many respects, reform the whole question of domestic service. The school will give a home to girls out of service and will have teachers to train them in every form of housework, so that the heads of the institution can guarantee not only the good character of every girl going out from them, but that she is perfectly competent to do the work she is hired for. Their recommendation will be held sufficient, and a girl who is graduated from the school will be given a diploma that will serve her as a "character" all over the United States. They will turn out laundresses who have been taught to do up laces and fine goods, cooks who can make pastries, confections and entrees, and finished ladies' maids from the upper classes, and there will be simpler courses training girls for maids of all work. Special attention is to be paid to the training of nurse-maids, who will be taught about bathing and dressing children, caring for milk bottles, and all the thousand and one details that the ordinary nurse is so distressingly ignorant of. No girl will be retained in the school who is not of good character, healthy, capable and willing to work, but women answering this description will be given every advantage, and are permitted to make their home in the school when out of employment.

Gen Neal Dow has an invalid daughter in Nashua, N. H., who may certainly be regarded as a wonderful woman. The lady has not been able to move from her chair for years, but she has been an indefatigable student and has mastered the French, German, Spanish, Russian and Greek languages. She recently performed the fent of repeating a long passage from her Greek Testament, verbatim, from memory a month after she had read it. Miss Dow loses sight of her misfortunes in her love of study.

The newest occupation for women, says the New York Sun, is said to be that of superintendent of weddings. The superintendent, who is usually a youngish woman, is installed in the house of the bride-to-be some little time before the ceremony. She selects the trousseau, advises what is the latest and finest underwear, buys the material and designs and makes or superintends the making of the gowns, knows all about the stockings, boots, gloves, laces, and handkerchiefs, sees to the millinery, and jackets and wraps, tells the bride's mother and sisters what to wear, dictates to the bridesmaids, thinks of everything and lets the engaged couple enjoy themselves with unaxious minds.

One of Scranton's wide-awake milk-peddlers is a single woman, 24 or 25 years old. She drives around in a covered wagon with windows in front and sliding doors on each side, and she doesn't leave her seat when she serves her customers. The lines run through a couple of holes in the wagon's front. She drops them and rings a bell as soon as her horse stops at a customer's house, and the servant comes out and gets served by the rosy-cheeked milk-maid. Her horse knows every customer's place as well as she does, and the jolly young woman seems to enjoy her life tiptop. It makes no difference what the weather is, she is as regular as the sun the year round.-National Stockman and Farmer,