one third part of the children which require care. We want a locale, we want funds to enlarge the place and to enable us to give the poorest of the children their dinners at the school. Many of our good and considerate ladies here know of a certainty how great need there is to establish some superintendence over the poor children and their homes, as well within as without the town, and they will therefore unquestionably consider that the proposition which I am now about to make is not ill-timed, nay rather that this is just the proper time and season in which to bring it forward. I propose therefore that all the goddesses and graces, that is to say, all the ladies here present, should form themselves into a LadiesSociety to visit the homes of the poor, look after the children and take charge of and use all their means to support the infant school; and I further propose that for the obtaining of the necessary funds for this purpose, that the entrance-tickets for the approaching festivity may be made chargeable with a sort of impost for the benefit of the Ladies'-society and its Infant-schools.

"Ladies and gentlemen!" continued the speaker with earnestness," many of you are perhaps not aware that at no great distance from our Olympian company, here in the town, there stands in a lane an old house, or rather a barracks, called the Great Quarter; there, for many years has been assembled together more misery and wretchedness than many of you have even seen during the whole of your lives, and that amidst these dregs, this scum of our town's population, live children-little children, ladies and gentlemen,-whom any mother's heart, here in this room, might thank God to call their own, and yet which are in the Great Quarter cast down into every kind of wretchedness. I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, that this is a state of things which we ought not to tolerate: but that we must cleanse out this quarter of hell, or at least rescue the children from it, and let them come into

God's light and life. It is our Christian duty! My wife has often urged me to speak to you on this subject, and now I have done it, and I am glad that I have!"

The little clergyman wiped the perspiration from his brow, and then continued with a smile.

"It may seem a little bold to request the Muses and the Graces to cleanse out the Great Quarter, but since the day when a God washed on earth the feet of the poor, the Olympian sisters have not regarded it as below their dignity to help in obtaining shoes and stockings for poor children. We have a good proverb, which says, 'A quick beginning is half the winning.' Let us therefore begin the work this very day, this very moment. Let us here at once form a Ladies'-Society."

"I am intending to write a book against Ladies' Societies!" said the Protocol Secretary, N. B. "I have already collected the material."

"Yes, it is these philanthropic undertakings and societies which are the ruin of us!" said Mr. Von Tackjern, whilst he buttoned yet another of his coatbuttons.

"We are never going on right; we shall become a poor-house and a hospital!" sighed Mrs. Uggla, shaking her whole body.

"He might have waited till my dinner, then I could have drawn out of the thing," thought Mrs. Von Tupplander, with displeasure, shaking her head.

Various gentlemen, in the meantime, both elderly and young, had, at the mention of "a fund for a good purpose," immediately put their hands in their breast pockets to feel for their memorandum-books; and the Countess P., who had lately come to the place where her husband had bought a large property, and who, on account of her goodness and unassuming manners, made the world forgive her beauty, rank, and wealth, hastened, together with Mimmi Svanberg and a few other ladies, to

the good pastor, thanked him, and begged him to "reckon upon them."

The prevailing tone of the company, however, remained hesitating and doubtful. People were heard to say, "It is not now the time."-"One must think about the thing."" After the fancy-ball one should have time to attend to the question."-"Now one must think about Olympus and Valhalla, and the costumes."

Yngve Nordin raised his voice to ask the decision of the company, respecting the sale of the tickets and the appropriation of the money to the before-mentioned fund.

It was agreed to with acclamation; discussion of the main subject itself was deferred till another time, and Major Von Post's voice was again heard summoning gods and goddesses to take their places, and the arrangement of the merry divinities came into full swing.

"Let us go now, my little old man," whispered the wife of the pastor to her husband, who was again wiping his hot forehead. "We have at all events obtained something, and I want to go home."

"How? Are
Are you ill?"

"No, not exactly so. But I feel an anxiety, an oppression! You know that I feel so sometimes. It is to me as if the very floor were burning under my feet. By all means let us go!"

'Directly, directly! Let us merely take leave of the hostess!" And the good married couple soon disappeared from the scene of action, where all was now in a state of merry confusion.

HERE AND THERE ON THE WAY HOME.

"IN a minute or two I will be with you again, but I must now accompany papa home!" said Mimmi Svanberg to her friends as she prepared to accompany her aged father.

In the hall she found Ingeborg Uggla, waiting with her usual patience for her ill-tempered grumbling mother, who was detaining Dr. Hedermann, the principal physician of the town; a man both beloved and feared; beloved for his skill and his benevolence, feared for his epigrammatic wit, especially by the ladies, to whose deceit and vanity he ascribed the degenerate state of the present generation, and whom he therefore continually attacked by his sarcasm. Mrs. Uggla had seized upon the doctor just as he left the company, and having described her cramps to him for the thirtieth time, and received a promise of some drops, now proceeded to unburden her heart;

"Is it not both pitiable and laughable at the same time with all these schemes?"

"What schemes, my gracious lady?"

"Oh, the fancy-ball and ladies' society!

"The ladies' society!" exclaimed the doctor; "the most rational proposition in the world, only it has something serious about it. But it will come to nothing. It will be mere playwork. Ladies have not time for such things. They have more serious business to attend to; their dress, their pleasures; their worsted-work, their housekeeping also. I believe-nothing will come of it—

nothing, merely amusement, believe me. Good-night, ladies! Much pleasure at the fancy-ball, and-many catarrhs and pleurisies after it ;-for that's generally the way! Good-night!"

Mimmi Svanberg laughed. "The good doctor," she said, "he has his fixed idea! I wish we could cure

him."

"He hates women," said Ingeberg, with a sigh, the depth of which, together with the expression of her eye, and her paleness, were remarked by Mimmi Svanberg, and strengthened her in the idea which she had long entertained, that a deep, but unrequited sentiment attached Ingeborg to the eccentric, though really amiable and universally esteemed physician.

"He is a rational man," said Mrs. Uggla, "because he believes that everything in the world gets worse and worse."

"But we, with our societies, think of making everything better and better!" said Mimmi cheerfully; "and I calculate upon Ingeborg as a member of that which we are about to establish."

"Then she will certainly never get married," sighed Mrs. Uggla. "These public societies, or unions, are altogether direct hindrances to private unions."

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I don't believe so," said Mimmi; "but if they should help us to become more active and happy human beings than hitherto without marriage, then, really, there would be nothing to complain of. What do you say, Ingeborg?"

"I acknowledge," said Ingeborg, not without emotion, "that I consider a happy marriage as the happiest of all unions, and the greatest happiness upon earth; but, if this cannot be obtained, it is then desirable to employ one's life and one's energies in another direction. And in this way ladies' societies may be very useful to those, who, like myself, are too bashful or are not active enough