with it the mark of good acts done while living here below. Each kind act, every generous deed, will leave its impress. But how few of them there are. The one who rides to-day with upturned nose and averted face towards the poor wayfarer trodding along on foot, may be glad to mingle with that same one later on. No, there is not much real seriousness or thought in the world any more. There are too many moving picture shows to-day. The needs of men should always remain the same, but our wants are getting greater every day. Every one is living as if they were going to live on forever, buying, buying, buying. They can not get enough in their houses to satisfy them. A philosopher is always ahead of his time and Thoreau's books should do more good to-day than at the time in which they were written. Emerson and his circle of acquaintances were Thoreau's friends and we all know what thinkers and writers they were. They lived the simple life many years before Charles Wagner wrote his charming little volume. If Thoreau found a need for his book in 1854 how much greater is that need to-day! Listen to some of his sentences: "Most of the luxuries, and many of the so-called comforts of life, are not only not indispensable but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind. I have in my mind that exceedingly wealthy but most terribly impoverished class of all who have accumulated dross, but know not how to use it or get rid of it and thus have forged their own golden or silver fetters." "No man ever stood the lower in my

estimation for having a patch in his clothes; yet I am sure there is great anxiety commonly to have fashionable or at least clean and unpatched clothes than to have a sound conscience. We know but few men-a great many coats."

CHAPTER XXII.

THE TERRORS OF A WESTERN

THUNDER-STORM.

One of the cleverest women I ever knew in my life, and to whose kindness during my school days I am greatly indebted, cared nothing at all for stylish dressing. Though well endowed with wealth she would not get up-to-date hats and clothing. Every one in the city where she lived loved her and respected her eccentricities. Many times I used to go with her to a hospital she had founded and both of us would get onto a streetcar well laden with baskets filled with comforts for the poor sick and the sick poor. A stranger might have laughed at us, but no one who knew her would. One day her sister reprimanded her for wearing such a peculiar hat and her expression was laughable as she took off the censured headgear and holding it up remarked: 'Why, what is the matter with it, there isn't a hole in it.'

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Of course, there is an extreme either way and it's the extremes that we must guard against. Wear a hat to-day of the style in vogue a decade ago and a hooting crowd will almost follow you in the street. We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcae, but Fashion.

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