: The Galaxy June 1877 Vol. XXIII.—June 1877.—No. 6. by Various - American literature Periodicals The Galaxy

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ied head whose arms are the instruments of the Passion--and how well off one's body was!"

And I've been--no, I've been bidden to the Dialectical Society. You don't know what that is, my barbaric New Zealander? And I didn't know either when Mr. Malise sent me tickets for one evening, specially urging my attendance, as there would be something well worth hearing--a paper on "Celibacy" read by its author, a gifted young girl of only twenty-two!

I took my tickets to my liege. "Ronayne, fount of wisdom and light, whatever may the Dialectical Society be?"

"Oh, Adam! And why not? Because I'm, unluckily, married, am I to stop trying to improve myself, and not care to know what grand heights happier, unhampered women are scaling? And, Adam, only see, here's to be a paper read by a young lady only twenty-two, Mr. Malise says, and there couldn't be anything so very dreadful to hear in the little composition of an innocent young creature like that!"

FRAULEIN LILIAN MACFARLANE.

I don't like, for the family's sake, to imagine. When Ronayne gave him the picture on his birthday, our joint offering, my work set in the loveliest frame Ronayne could find, he couldn't help being pleased, and he couldn't help knowing it was baby's very self; but if the picture had been the work of a paid artist, I know he would have been wonderfully soothed. The picture was on exhibition for some days in the morning room, and being one day in the conservatory with Ronayne, I heard his father expatiating upon the striking likeness that had been happily caught, to a lady visitor. Presently I heard her read the signature, "Lil. De Vere, del., 1873." "Why, it is your daughter-in-law's work! How charming for a mother to be able to paint such an admirable portrait of her child. That must double the picture's value to you!"

"Aw, yes, yes--of course! A nice and amateur talent has Mrs. De Vere."

"Nice amateur talent!" I was fit to fly at him, and only the brutal--yes, the brutal--grasp of my husband kept me from rushing into the room and proclaiming "Mrs. De Vere's" antecedents--her artistic career sketched in a few bold touches.

The world would have ended then and there. But how delightful to have seen, first, his looks of blank horror at the idea of a daughter-in-law who had been used to rough it, and to make her little money go a fabulously long way.

And if I portray my baby in every week of her life, her father turns her to account no less. She is beginning to chatter like a wren, and Ronayne has a notebook devoted to her earliest attempts at speech--the sounds, as she is progressively able to make them--the easily-conquered ones, the impregnable rock-fortresses, the turns, substituted letters. Sometimes I get quite furious over this anatomical process. My darling says something with the dearest, sweetest, small voice:

"Oh, Ronayne!" I cry. "Did you hear? Three words together--'Pease, papa, tugar!'" And I smother her in ecstasy.

"They called loudly upon Dr. Thunder to speak; but he refused to rise, preferring, I suppose, to hear how well his disciples could acquit themselves; for he is the author of a work upon physiology which is nick-named the 'Social Science Bible'--a book I believe to be one of the most mischievous that has appeared within recent years--materialistic to the last degree, degrading man, disorganizing society.

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