DEAR SISTERS:—You are right. My mind has been too much in the world. I have been led into walks of life that do not accurately jibe with the pious experiences of former days. I confess my shortcomings with humiliation, and am resolved on a season of mission duties in another direction than horse-races. They are exciting, and give one a high-stepping inclination. Still, my motive is good.

"Try all things, and hold fast to that which is good," is scriptural, but on some occasions may be temptations, especially when the thing that is good happens to be disagreeable, and the other is awfully enticing.

Any way, sisters, I am determined to do my duty in every walk of life, and the foremost duty this moment takes me far away from Long Branch, puts me on two steamboats and two short snatches of railroads, which land me at the foot of a great, sandy, high-sloping hill—some people call it a bluff—but which religious people of several denominations call "Sea Cliff Grove."

Now, Sea Cliff Grove is a sacred institution, lifted high up toward Heaven, and bathed in an especial odor of sanctity, conglomerated from ever so many different churches, and so centralized in a place that may, to the fanciful mind, be considered a city set on a hill.

Indeed, it is. If Jordan is a hard road to travel, Sea Cliff Grove is an awful hill to climb, even in a covered stage, with two long, thin horses dragging the blessed pilgrims upward with all their might.

Before we got clear up, there was now and then an encouraging glimpse of brightness from the dome of the tabernacle, covered over with tin, which blazed and sparkled and shone in the hot sunshine, till it set one's brain to sweltering. If it hadn't been for a cool fringe of trees running along the edge of the hill, it seemed to me as if the whole bluff must have burned up, and gone off in a blaze of glory. That dome, which looked like a great cone, roofed in with milk-pans set on edge, was the crowning glory of a new tabernacle—not the one built without hands, for it took a great many hands to build this great, rambling affair, besides the cottages and tents and long, open stoops, that look out on the sea from morning till night.

Among these tents and little houses and the great tabernacle, the man who drove us took his ten cents a-piece, and set us down, and wheeled about, singing "Old Hundred" to his horses, and swinging his whip with slow solemnity as he lumbered down hill again.

Then we started off afoot in search of Cousin Dempster's cottage, for he had sent on ahead, and hired one of the little cubby-houses for us to stay in till the religious season was over.

We found our cubby-house at last, but somebody else had got their nine points of the law out of it. So the man sent on beforehand had pitched a tent on the grass, which we went into like Indians just returned from a hunting-party—dusty, thirsty, and sort of wolfish for something to eat.

We took off our bonnets, and pinned them by the strings to the walls of the tent, which were of the best tow-cloth I ever saw out of Vermont. Then we shook ourselves, as hens do when they have been rolling in the dust, and pushed back our hair with both hands, which E. E. said was making a rural toilet worthy of the occasion. Then I, with the kindest intentions, shook out E. E.'s—full panier—and found it puckered-up with green burdock burs, which she had got on from the weeds on her way to the tent. These I picked off, one by one, while she was stamping her foot with a spirit that shocked me dreadfully in that sacred place, for all around us the people were singing and praying, and shouting "Hallelujah" and "Amen" and "Glory," in a way that made the pious teachings of my grandmother rile up within me. I looked upon the burdock burs as a judgment upon Mrs. Dempster, especially as I hadn't any puckerings in my dress to catch them in, and she had brought all her wordliness on her back.