In a lecture about girls, Cady Stanton contrasted the buoyant spirit of young males with the dejected sickliness of immature women. This, she says, is because the latter are keenly sensitive to the fact that they have no aim in life. This is a sad, sad truth! No longer ago than last year the writer’s youngest girl—Gloriana, a skin-milk blonde concern of fourteen—came pensively up to her father with big tears in her little eyes, and a forgotten morsel of buttered bread lying unchewed in her mouth.

“Papa,” murmured the poor thing, “I’m gettin’ awful pokey, and my clothes don’t seem to set well in the back. My days are full of ungratified longin’s, and my nights don’t get any better. Papa, I think society needs turnin’ inside out and scrapin’. I haven’t got nothin’ to aspire to—no aim; nor anything!”

The desolate creature spilled herself loosely into a cane-bottom chair, and her sorrow broke “like a great dyke broken.”

The writer lifted her tenderly upon his knee and bit her softly on the neck.

“Gloriana,” said he, “have you chewed up all that toffy in two days?”

A smothered sob was her frank confession.

“Now, see here, Glo,” continued the parent, rather sternly, “don’t let me hear any more about ‘aspirations’—which are always adulterated with terra alba—nor ‘aims’—which will give you the gripes like anything. You just take this two shilling-piece and invest every penny of it in lollipops!”

You should have seen the fair, bright smile crawl from one of that innocent’s ears to the other—you should have marked that face sprinkle, all over with dimples—you ought to have beheld the tears of joy jump glittering into her eyes and spill all over her father’s clean shirt that he hadn’t had on more than fifteen minutes! Cady Stanton is impotent of evil in the Grile family so long as the price of sweets remains unchanged.