A REFORMER'S TROUBLES.

BY MRS. MARGARET HOSMER.

GRAVE lady of my acquaintance, | feel; and yet, I did not see the exact who wears steel spectacles and point of it. Trifling away my existence, carries a bag of documents, said to me indeed! It is very easy for her to talk the other day: "My dear Miss Psyche, so, who has vowed her life sacred to how can you trifle away your existence? water-proof and black alpaca; who has Awake, I entreat you, to a sense of duty cut her hair short and foresworn overand the solemnity of life. See the my- skirts, recognizing only two principles in riads of your down-trodden sex perishing dress; first, to secure a covering, and in slavery to vice or custom, and ask then a protection against the weather. yourself, dare I withhold my aid?"

self after the uncomfortable finale of the apple affair, she knew as much as that. The fig leaves did the one, and the coats of skin the other; and it would be a pity if, after studying the subject closely for nearly six thousand years, we, her daughters, could go no farther.

To begin at the beginning. There's my hair to be done, and the immense amount of frizziness demanded by fashion is actually appalling. People pitied Medusa, the Gorgon, because she had to have little, squirming snakes all over her head, but nobody takes into consideration the trouble it is to make our locks imitate them. Hers grew that way, but we have to get ours up; and they create no hats on her mountain, at least she never has one on in a picture—so her snake did not have to be rearranged to bear crushing, or modelled over after the operation. Then just think of the one article of trimming, and everybody knows that you can have nothing unless it is trimmed-the more elaborately the better.

Of course you don't want to repeat yourself, tautology in style is so tiresome; as to leaving it to your dressmaker, it is not safe, since you are quite likely to find at the next party you attend, that you are the counterpart of some awkward customer of hers, whose costume she has copied in yours. There is nothing for you to do but give your mind to it, and every one who does it thoroughly knows how fatiguing it is. If my serious friend, Miss Progress, only tried to walk in Grecian-bend heels for one day, she would cease to accuse me of frivolity, and realize for herself that the ways of fashion are not flowery paths of ease. took me a fortnight of incessant practice to acquire that little quivering motion so absolutely necessary to the correct balance of a pannier, and after that I had to learn the classic stoop that is so essential, yet so hard on the spine.

that is elegant, from the superfluity that is clumsy in delicate trimming.

Awake to a sense of duty! I rubbed my eyes instinctively, and looked at the pencil and paper with which I was tracing directions; I was certainly not asleep, and I could not well be busier than I found myself.

Then I thought of the myriads of my sex perishing in slavery. I hoped not, after all the fuss they'd made, the terrible war, and all that.

I could not decide how the white satin shells should lie on my skirt, so I went seriously into the consideration of Miss Progress' remarks, and remembered that she had particularized two evil powers under the names of vice and custom.

I did not quite understand their connection, but supposed I might study it out.

The more I thought of it, the more I became convinced that I dare not withhold my aid; that I was bound to do my very best to alleviate the wrongs and sorrows of my sex; and that, although I had not paid attention to the subject before, I was naturally fitted to become a reformer, and eager to begin the task.

I just made a parcel of the satin and lace, wrote a hasty note to the dressmaker, saying she might consult her taste, as I had serious occupation for my time and thoughts at present.

When one starts out on a new road, he must keep all his energies and abilities clear for action; so, casting all interest aside, except the one to which I had so newly awakened, I tried to think of some poor victim of the terrible powers I was to conquer, so that I might begin at It once.

When Miss Progress addressed me in the startling way I have quoted, I was torturing my brain to invent a proper finish for a tulle overdress, and was really distracted lest I should stray over the subtle line that divides the sufficiency

I had heard of a great number of poor persons, and Mrs. Manly, the housekeeper, knew quantities of beggars. I was not sure whether they needed rescuing, or, if they were rescued, whether they would not immediately go back and be poor and beg, they seemed to like it so well. I determined to take a walk and think it over; not a promenade, you understand, but a resolute sort of walk, to observe and cogitate, and rescue too, if I found an opportunity.

Now Miss Progress has an impressive and he smiled cheerfully. "If I had ten sort of stalk, that at once proclaims her cents tally, wouldn't she be in a bully a superior person, and rather intimidates good humor, though!" he said musingly. ordinary people when they see her bearing down on them like a stage ghost, with a truncheon of paper in her hand. She always carries a petition, and always wants names to it.

I am afraid I was trying to imitate her style, and on account of my heels did not succeed very well, when I ran against a little boy who was weeping in a wild and tearless way beside an empty tin pan. I felt so sorry for the little fellow that I entirely forgot I was a philanthropist, and began to comfort him in a common and totally unscientific way.

"What is the matter, dear?" I said. "Pray don't cry so, and tell me what I can do for you.'

He seemed only waiting an opportunity to relate his woes. He seized this one eagerly.

"O, lady," he cried, "I spilt my sand on the ground, and I haint got none left to sell, and mammy will jist whale the skin off me if I go home without money." "What an extremely severe person she must be!"

"O, aint she, though!" and he winked cunningly in the depths of his woe, and actually howled as he recalled her characteristics. "She aint got no pity; the more she makes you screech, the more she pounds away.'

"If I give you money enough to pay for what you have lost, do you suppose she will spare you, my boy?" I asked.

"She can't lick me then, 'cause she won't know it," he said, brightening, and instantly holding out his hand.

pan?"

"How much was there in the "Thirty-five cents worth," rather doubtfully, and looking hard at me as he spoke.

I gave him that amount, and he stantly added:

in

"That was what it cost me, you see; I was going to sell it for sixty, but I aint got time to sell it now, and I suppose I am bound to get a whaling any how." Here he relapsed into deep

moans.

I immediately added twenty-five cents,

His hand being still out, I added that small amount. How well repaid I was to see him dance with boyish glee, though I did not like his expression when he shut up one eye and winked with the other several times.

He caught up his tin and was about to run off with a peculiar ducking and dodging motion that he had, when I remembered my mission.

Any parent who would abuse her offspring as this boy's mother did, must certainly be a victim of vice. Here was my opportunity.

"Where does your mother live, my dear?"

"Down Lane street, up Prior's court, back of Mrs. Bond's alley," he replied all in a breath.

I did not know the locality; my only hope of gaining it was keeping up with the sand boy. I asked him if he was going directly home, and he said yes and no, and then looked blank, and wanted evidently to get away.

I had always noticed that Miss Progress' strong point was persistence. I borrowed it, and took the unsatisfactory child in custody by the coat sleeve.

"I am going with you, dear," I said, disguising compulsion in kindness; "I want to become acquainted with your parent, and will say nothing whatever about the spilling of the sand."

He was not a docile or amiable lad in disposition, nor did he evince any grateful feeling. On the contrary, he set out on a sort of jerking jog-trot that almost took me off my feet in keeping up with him, and accompanied the motion with an inward growl most unpleasant to hear.

I was really out of breath, and had entirely abandoned the approved mode of walking, when we reached a dirty little street, that opened into a dirtier court, and seemed to attain the climax of slop and slush in the gutter of a small alley, where a person with a disagreeably red face was cleaning some fish.

I had been thinking, as I was hauled along so unceremoniously by the sand

sand-boy kept hanging around the stool on which I sat, and really made me nervous by his motions.

"If you had some-some"-I looked all around, and felt more deeply impressed with the need of such an agent at every glance. "If you had some soap, and a brush, and a clean window curtain, and a few things to fix your room with, I think you would be more comfortable, and then we could talk of further improvement."

She had given an indignant start and glare at the mention of soap, but softened as I went on, and even smiled as I concluded.

"Yis," she said with an unpleasant leer, "but them things takes money, and we haven't a penny to save us from starving."

"I will give you some money," I said, remembering to have read somewhere that nothing inspired a poor sinner to better actions more readily than being honored with the trust of his fellows. "I will give you money, and you can let me see how well you will expend it."

She agreed to this most willingly, and laying down her knife and herring, drew her hands up and down the soiled skirt of her tattered dress by way of cleansing them, previous to entering into a business view of her circumstances.

I found her like her promising son, in her ability to rise with the occasion; whatever I offered to do, she instantly improved on by additional suggestions; but I was determined to use discretion, and limit the expenditure to plain and necessary articles, which, when counted up, amounted to twelve dollars and something over.

I asked the woman her name, and she said "Mrs. Murphy, me darling young daisy; Denis is me husband's name, and Corney is me son's. We come of as good a stock of people as any in Ameriky, and sure yerself can't boast better blood nor us, for all we're rejuced in our fortunes." She was growing fearfully familiar, and patting me on the shoulder, brought her fiery face so near mine that my philanthropy quailed, and I wanted to run

away.

That would have been unworthy the spirit of reform. I steeled myself against the scent of stale liquor, gave her the money, and as much good advice as I could find words to express; while the ungrateful sand-boy kept twitching my dress and tormenting me by grotesque antics, which his parent did not observe. I told Mrs. Murphy that I should allow her to-morrow to work in, and call the following day to view the result of my effort. I said everything encouraging that I could think of, and tried to hide my shrinking as I gave her my hand at parting.

She certainly had changed greatly even under this one effort; she blessed me profusely, and showed a tendency at one time to fling herself on my neck. It was at this point I took my leave, and her boy followed me into the alley, and thence into the court, making very disrespectful hooting sounds after me, in which he was joined by a dozen squalid little creatures, who seemed each to carry clamshells for toys, and look upon the gutter as a legitimate play-ground. They came close upon me, grasping at my dress and yelling so that I looked around in dismay to find that Cornelius Murphy, to whom I gave seventy cents and much consoling sympathy, had in return stolen one of my hair pins out of my chignon, and by that means skewered the herring his mother had held into the silk and velvet of my sash.

I really do not know what a thoroughbred reformer would have done in a like case. I was but a novice, and I was as angry as I could be. I grasped at Corney, who was dancing such a frantic dance around me as to be off his guard, and getting an excellent hold on him, I just marched him back to his parent, who chanced to be at the end of the alley haranguing a crowd of mothers who looked in perfect keeping with their miserable offspring. She started when she saw me, and thrusting something she had been exhibiting out of sight in the bosom of her dress, stepped back so that a bottle fell on the pavement and broke. As soon as she heard my complaint against her boy, she uttered a sort of war