"Not to-night, dear Grace! Indeed I cannot; I am too miserable."

know you are dying to hear my news; | quering game out of three at backgammon come to the arbor, and enjoy these last with Grace. bright hours of autumn while we may." Grace quickly followed. Having found one of the knitting-pins she had dropped, and settled her fect on a footstool, she began,

"My child, I have found the very thing for you; and here is the history: When I was condoling with poor Frau Müller to-day, she lamented to me that they had just taken their étage for a year, and made many additions to their furniture, and now they should have all the cost of travel, besides their rent. So a bright thought struck me. And what would you say, meine liebe Frau,' I said, 'if I were to find you good tenants tranquil, careful, and regular to pay?' 'Ach Gott!' cried the poor lady, but where is such a thing to be found in our little town?' Whereupon I told her of my good cousin, your mother, and offered to write to her at once. And so do, my child; for it is a chance that seldom happens. Stay (for Grace had clasped her hands and opened her mouth to speak) "tell the dear mother that she can have the étage for three hundred and fifty thalers a little more than they pay for bare walls. And stay yet: it is a pretty apartment, of five-six pieces, and a kitchen; not richly furnished, but neat and pretty, and near the school at the upper end of the town, by the park. So now write, meine Gracechen."

"You dear, delightful, thoughtful Cousin Alvsleben!" cried Grace, embracing her rapturously; "you bring me joy and comfort. Oh, how delighted my mother will be! Agree for the apartment at once; there is no need to tell my mother first. I will only write to tell her to prepare. And when shall we be able to have these rooms?"

"All the more reason you should come and talk with me."

After some further resistance Frieda yielded.

"Come and sit by the window. The moonlight is lovely! I will not light my candle. Do you mind the open window, dear Frieda?"

"No, not at all! but do not sit half out of the window: that cannot be good." "It does me no harm."

There was a long pause. Grace did not know how to approach her subject. It was delicate and difficult-how should she manage? A low, soft sigh from Frieda, and Grace rushed into speech.

"What is the matter with you, Frieda? You are sad and silent. You do not speak to me as you used. Don't you know I like you the best; indeed, I may say, love you the best of all I have met here?"

"Love me the best?" cried Frieda, whose lip quivered. "Nay, my dear cousin, you deceive yourself. Your best love is for another. Nor do I blame you: it is but natural."

"Who is the other, then?" asked Grace, quite pleased to think she had drawn Frieda to the verge of an explanation. My uncle? Well, I do love him heartily, but you are different-you, my companion and playfellow."

66

"Ah, Grace! Why wilt thou not be candid with me? Thinkest thou because I have never travelled and crossed the sea, that I am dull and blind and cannot understand the tokens of preference that love forces even so proud a spirit as thine to betray? No, no! I feel too deeply myself not to comprehend. Thy joy at exchanging the splendors of London for a little country town like Zittau thy After a few more explosions of exuber- eagerness to acquaint thyself with everyant satisfaction, Grace retired to her own thing German, even our domestic work room to write a long letter full of direc-all tells the same tale. Thou lovest, tions and suggestions to her mother, infinitely thankful to have found such a solution of her difficulties.

"In about a fortnight."

CHAPTER XXII.

"No, Frieda! you shall not pass my door! You must come in! Why do you avoid me? I have quantities to talk about to you."

So spoke Grace as the two girls paused at the latter's door that night after their guest was gone, and Count Costello had retired triumphant, having won the con

my poor cousin! May your love be happy!" and covering her face with her hands, Frieda burst into a flood of tears.

Grace got up, turned the key in the door, and coming back to her seat in the window, said quietly,

"And with whom am I in love?"

"Grace! it is not like yourself, this affectation of ignorance," said Frieda, struggling to be composed, and speaking English. "Would you force me to speak the name of one dear to me. Yes, I do not blush to own it. I will open my heart,

though false pride closes yours, and show you that a German maiden cannot immolate herself on the altar of love and friendship. For, Grace, I love Otto Sturm! I have loved him for years! that is, since I came from school. But I see that you are a nobler woman than I ammore worthy of him than I am. You have from the first recognized his great qualities. I was too volage; I was amused to flirt with Wolff von Falkenberg, and I fear that Otto felt himself slighted. Now reap the bitter fruits of my own worth lessness! He turns from me he seeks you; naturally, your souls are akin! And I-I must submit - I must rise superior to self, and offer it a burnt sacrifice to the beloved lover and friend, who in their bliss will sometimes give me a thought." Here she broke down, nearly choked with sobs.

I

"I would much rather not," returned Grace, kissing her brow; "it was all mortifying and foolish, and I want to forget as soon as possible. I should be quite glad to fall in love with somebody else, just to change the current of my ideas."

"But, Grace," said Frieda, shocked at such a declaration, "faithfulness is one of woman's noblest qualities."

"I dare say it is; but what is the sense of being faithful to one who does not want your faith, and who makes you miserable - I mean uncomfortable? There! never remind me of this confession, or we shall quarrel, Frieda. Now talk of Dr. Sturm."

"Ah, sweetest cousin! how little I thought that a creature so bright as you are, had this load of grief upon your

heart!"

"But it is not such a load, Frieda; I have been ever so much better since I came here, and would much rather you did not pity me. Talk of yourself."

Whereupon Frieda poured forth a history of her acquaintance with Dr. Sturm, from their first meeting to the present time, with minute details of how he looked and what she felt; of how the divine attraction of mutual sympathy and comprehension had drawn them together; of the marvel that so great a soul as Otto's should condescend to the simplicity of hers; of a thousand and one presenti

"Frieda," exclaimed Grace, astonished at the self-abandonment of this outburst, "you are a dear, generous thing; but you are talking nonsense! I am not in love with Dr. Sturm, and I am perfectly certain he is not in love with me! I like him beyond everything in the way of a teacher I have ever met, for to talk with him is a valuable lesson; but as to being in love good heavens!" she added in dignantly, "if I was, do you think I could say right out that I liked him, that I did not want any one to interrupt our conversations, that he was the most interesting man I ever met! Why, even that con-ments and heavenly glimpses, hidden ceited cousin of yours, Falkenberg, would understand such praises of himself to be a sign that I was not in love with him. And as to Dr. Sturm, you are so cold and strange, it is no wonder he turns from you! Do not be a goose, Frieda; use your sense, and you will see we are such friends that we never could be anything more. To show you I can be frank too, I will say what I never said to mortal before - that once, not so very long ago, I was very fond of some one, and it will be long before I shall care for any one else. There! I could not prove my love for you more than by confessing so much.”

"And, my liebe, liebe Grace !" cried Frieda, all tears and blushes, kneeling beside her and clasping her arms round her waist, "is it then true that Otto is nothing to you save a friend?"

Nothing whatever!

"Ah! you were defended by another attachment. But tell me all! My beloved, you are unhappy; pour forth your heart to me!"

away in her heart; of the weak vanity which had been flattered by the attentions of Wolff, whom she knew made love to every girl as a matter of course, a mere politesse, and had drawn her from that steady devotion which Otto deserved; of her fears that he did not, could not really love her a rapidly flowing torrent of talk that Grace at length thought would never end.

"Speak lower, Frieda," she said, when the excited girl paused for breath. "If your mother hears, she will scold us for sitting up."

"No; she will not mind, as we are not burning the candle. But tell me, sweetest cousin, do you think it possible that Otto loves me? Ah! if he does not, what is to become of me?"

"It is very hard to say," returned the sage counsellor, with an air of reflection. "I have seen and known so few people, that my opinion is not worth much. I have only instinct to guide me; but I have always somehow felt that he was fond of you. When we are talking, no

"Absolutely handsome!" repeated Frieda, surprised. "Why, he is always beau-on Saturday, when Otto comes, will you tiful!"

quite two years afterwards, November 19, | soe," Josephus's "History and Wars of 1831, young James was born.

At an early age he was left fatherless, and his mother had to struggle with many difficulties. Some portions of the forest had been turned into fruitful fields when, one hot summer's day, a fire broke out in the surrounding woods, whose dry leaves and branches easily ignited. The ripening corn was in danger. The farmer's hopes were near destruction. With an admirable energy Abram Garfield set to work to throw up a dyke between his standing corn and the ravaging fire. After tremendous exertions he succeeded. But the success was dearly bought. Returning home, weary and overheated with his exhausting efforts, he took a chill. Inflammation of the throat followed which baffled all attempts to remedy. Medical practitioners in those thinly-settled districts were often mere pretenders, and Abram Garfield fell a victim to their incapacity. The poor fellow crept to the window of his log-house to take a last look at his oxen, was seized with a paroxysm, and, leaning against the head of his rude bed, was choked to death. He was in the prime of life, and left four children to the care of his wife a woman of intrepid spirit, of thorough Christian character, and well trained to self-reliant habits. James was the youngest child.

the Jews," Goodrich's "United States," and Pollok's "Course of Time." These were read, and reread, until he could recite whole chapters from memory. He was equally master of arithmetic and the earlier stages of a course of English grammar. His work on the farm and in the woods developed a naturally healthy and robust constitution, and to any of his schoolfellows who bullied him on the score of his poverty and his mother's humble manner of life, he proved such a formidable opponent that they were not forward to repeat the affront. In fact, his too ready resort to his fists to settle disputes. and punish the arrogance of boys who insulted him was a source of sorrow to his meek and enduring mother.

His first contract for work was with a cousin, for whom he engaged to cut a hundred cords of wood for twenty-five dollars. He was now sixteen years of age. The wood overlooked Lake Erie, and the sight of the blue waters, and the ships entering and leaving the port of Cleveland, revived the longing for a seafaring life which the reading of books of voyages and adventures had inspired. He resolved to become a sailor, and, as soon as his task was completed, he walked to Cleveland and went on board a schooner lying at the wharf. The crew were intoxicated, and the captain gave evidence of being a man of a coarse nature and brutal passions. This damped his ardor, and the same day, meeting another cousin who owned a canal boat plying between Cleveland and Pittsburgh, he engaged himself as driver. Three months later he was carried home to his mother sick with malarial fever, and in a state of un

The good woman faced her difficulties with true heroism, and maintained her struggles with constant privation in a noble spirit. She refused to send her elder children out to work among neighboring settlers, toiling with her own hands to keep them together under her own eye. Year by year the fields were ploughed and sown, and the crops, often scanty, were gathered. She made her children's cloth-consciousness. ing and that of the family of a neighboring shoemaker, who, in return, constructed clumsy, but substantial shoes for the young Garfields. In summer the boys worked in the fields, in winter they divided their time between tending the cattle and wood-cutting, and attendance at the local school.

James, who received his first lessons in English as well as a bright example of noble devotedness from his mother, was a precocious boy, both physically and mentally. At four years of age he received at the district school the prize of a New Testament as the best reader in the primary class. At eight he had read all the books contained in the little log farmhouse, and began to borrow from the neighbors such works as "Robinson Cru

This illness, and the five months of convalescence during which his mother nursed him back to health, proved a grand turning-point in his life. The opportunity for which she had prayed was given, and while with tender care she nursed him, she sought to plant in his mind higher aims in life than his boyish dreams had pictured to him. The schoolmaster aided her in these endeavors, and as soon as James was sufficiently recovered, he entered the seminary of Geauga, fourteen miles distant, as a student. His whole stock of money was seventeen dollars, but he rapidly acquired what proved of more value than money, a knowledge of Latin, Greek, and mathematics. There was an end to his ideas of the sea, and his thirst for knowledge grew day by day. His