rR Bellefonte, Pa., July 2, 1897. OLD BOOKS. 01d books are best— Like well tried friends who've stood the test Of time ; in each familiar line Within the oft-turned pages 1 Can find a charm divine That idlers heed not, glancing by. Ah! I love the books that long have stood Like watchful sentinels upon my shelf, Mindful, care-taking for my good, Aud erablematie of my life's best self. Ah! when they speak my very heart and soul grows young, Beyond the weak expressions that are strung In words. Old faces greet My longing eyes within the calm retreat Where books are kept—books old and dear, Whose friendship grows the closer year by year. —Portland Transcript. A POTENT MEMORY. They were all sitting on a board piazza, the wide blue sunlit sea washing the rocks below them, the wild green unspoiled Cape Ann country rolling away behind them. Some one had just mentioned the Philadel- phia Centennial, appealing to the com- pany to recall the heat of that summer ; all gave due assent, except Alice Andrews ; she, fair lady, only looked sweetly, slightly puzzled, and all but imperceptibly shook her head, as though she tried in vain to call up a past too dim. ‘The Mayhews have just gone to Lenox,’ said Mr. Sam Merrill, from his seat on the steps ; he made the announcement with the misplaced emphasis of one who inter- feres to change the subject of conversation. “Old Judge Mayhew, Henry’s grand- father, used to live in Lenox the year round. Fanny Kemble put him in her novel. I used to see her go horseback riding with Henry’s father.” It was old Mrs. Andrews, the hostess, who was talk- ing. These sentences were delivered with vivaeity ; but suddenly the life died out of her tone, and she added, weakly, ‘Of course little children take notice of people they hear talked about.” ‘Mother, what was the name of that daughter of Mrs. Kemble’s you met when you were visiting the Dalworthys ?”’ Alice asked. The question was not answered. Mrs. Andrews only said, grumpily, and as if she were deaf, that she wished she had a foodstool, and Alice got one, and placed it with a pretty air of affectionate solicitude. The old lady sat silent after this, leoking gloomily out to sea. ‘What is it you are making, Alice?” asked Mrs. Whitman. There were three visitors ; Mr. James Fenton made the third. Alice held up for inspection a beautiful trifle, a net of gold thread that she was creating wish only the help of a commonplace crochet needle. “It’s for the hair,” she said. ‘‘Of course they are not worn, but with some tea gowns or a picture dinner dress it would be lovely. It’s meant to go like you see them in Greek statuary sometimes—this way,’’ and she held it about her own low- coiled bronze-brown hair. “Well, you are really wonderful,’”’ said Mrs. Whitman, with conviction ; ‘‘that’s an exquisite thing.”’ “It would be more becoming to you ; there’s nothing like black hair for it, and your odalisque type—Now look,”’ and she held the net about the other woman’s head. ‘‘Isn’t that lovely 2’ to the men. ‘‘Mary dear, you must have it. No, now, don’t say a word ; you know it takes me no time at all to do such things. Just you and I shall have them, and no one else. I'll have it done to-day ;’ and she fell to work gracefully, easily, but more busily than before. ‘‘You ought to have a Greck gown to wear with yours, Miss Andrews. I’ve imagined how you’d look in one, one such as you see on some of those Tanagra figurines.”’ This from Merrill, with simple. self-forgetful sincerity. “Why, thank you ! How nice of you to think it out like that, and how wise to know it’s the Tanagras I ought to copy ! Some of them are really fashionable-look- ing, don’t you know, Mary ?”’ Mary did not respond to this appeal, and Jim Fenton's eyes, catching Alice’s, were luminous with the effort to convey the ef- fect of a wink without the gross reality. Mrs. Whitman was far too stout to wear Greek gowns, and her weight was known to be the affliction of her life. She said now : “It looks as if it were to be hoops again rather than Greek gowns. Don’t you re- member, Alice, how we used to think the bigger our hoops the more we looked like grown-up ladies ?”’ “I never wore any,’’ said Alice, gently, a faint touch of wonder on her lovely face. Soon the guests departed, the men ac- companying Mrs. Whiteman to her own cottage. “I'll send the net over in the morning,’ was Alice's last word to her. # When the three had turned a curve o the pine-shaded road, Fenton hurst into a chuckling laugh. “Well, what a time! Isn’t absurd ?’ said Mrs. Whitman. ‘‘Alice is certainly the sweetest thing in lots of ways, and I say she has kept her looks wonder- fully—really wonderfully ; but this thing about concealing her age is growing on her till it looks serious to me—it’s like lunacy. Now when I spoke about hoops, I was so sorry in a minute, hut I never thought. Of course she—My cousin Mildred Hope knew her when they were children all in hoops together. I'm so frank about my own age, and we are just about the same.”’ Mrs. Whitman paused, panting a little for breath. ” “The thing that breaks me all up’”’ said Fenton, ‘‘is the way she shuts off the joys of life from that poor old mother of hers. That old girl has known everybody from Webster down, and she’s got to her an- ecdotage, vet she ain’t allowed to go back of times any whipper-snapper of sixty could talk about. I call it cruelty to age.’ ‘She seems very devoted to her mother,’ said Sam Merrill, seriously. “Indeed she is, Mr. Merrill.”’ Mrs. Whit- man answered : ‘“‘but itis hard for Mrs. Andrews to repress herself, and she tries so hard, and is so good ahont it, poor thing !”’ She ended with a little laugh ; then added, with solemn, pious pity, “I really think she sacrifices 2a great deal of the pleasure she might get out of life reducing her age for Alice.’ . After Mrs. Whitman entered her own door the men went down to the shore and seated themselves on the rocks. “Well, Sam,” said Fenton. “I'm ashamed of you, setting one woman on another like that for your own Mach- avelian amusement, and bringing such a hard knock on poor Alice.” + the past that stretched behind a certain | it too | He laughed loudly at Merrill’s bewilder- ed response, and explained : ‘“The Whit- man took it out on Alice for your pointed hint that she herself couldn’t wear a Greek gown. I bet Alice thinks your compli- ment costs more than it came to.”’ ‘Mrs. Whitman unintentionally stum- bled into a very natural blunder. It was a blunder. as Miss Andrews feels the way she does. It’s agreat pity she is not open about her age as Mrs. Williams is herself ; it would be so much—"’ ‘See here, I’m not sweet on the fair Alice and I guess you are, but I'll not hear her run down with a comparison like that. Don’t the Whitman try to make out she and Alice are the same age—about the same’? - Well, are you ass enough to swal- low that. I know all about it, and she’s a good seven years older. It’s six of one and half a dozen of the other for lying, and Alice is the sillier and more amusing, and I’m grateful enough to like her for that.” ‘Alice is certainly silly on that point’ —DMerrill discussed the matter very grave- ly—*‘‘but she seems wonderfully sweet and womanly on many others."’ ‘‘She certainly does ; but you ought to notice and correct the way in which you express yourself on any of her moral merits. You always say ‘seems’ in a most doubting Thomasy, damning way.”’ ‘“What do you think about it yourself ?”’ and Merrill turned on Jim his sad gray questioning eyes; the sadness was only their usual expression, and only part of his habitual air of meeting life with patient philosophy. Jim’s younger and rounder face length- ened now. He picked up a bit of rock and and threw it into the green curling break- ers. ‘Sam,’’ he answered, after this exercise, ‘‘it’s queer to see you took like this, and I want to be glad, but I ain’t sure I am. You feel it yourself—that you can’t tell anything about her, that she’s such a won- derful work of art youcan’t guessat her inside works at all ; she seems and she seems. I haven’t any views different from your own, if you’ll face the music and see what you do think yourself. I’ve no con- vietions, but I’m almighty uncertain whether she’s got any heart at all. I'm sure she’s not got a bad one, but has any kind of blood-pumping apparatus survived! She’s been tribute-taking and conquest making through the longest reign I ever heard of, and that’s a credit to her, and she ain’t stuck up about it either. I think she’s done herself proud to come down to date not only so good-looking, but so pret- ty-behaved. But now, old man, as to whether she’s pretty-behaved because she’s old-fashioned enough to see that being nice and sweet is a card, like a good complexion and keeps her springs and wires well oiled for the purpose—well, I ain’t saying it ain’t so.” Fenton’s speeches were apt to be shorter and clearer than this. Now he looked the discomfort and embarrassment that caused his rhetorical deterioration. ‘It is horrible to have drawn you out to talk so about—about a gentle, attractive woman.”” Sam said this slowly, looking over the water ; but he said no more, made no efforts to confute his friend’s view. ‘‘Yes, you are pretty low, that’s a fact, Sam,” the other answered, ‘‘and you’ve entrapped my youth. For two big men to be sitting here cutting into a pretty little dolly just to see if sawdust—’’ ‘‘Stop, Fenton, she is too accomplished, too clever in her own way to be called a doll ; but she may be very artificial ; she seems so, sometimes. With all that, she— she has touched and interested me greatly. I dare say she would refuse me, she has refused 'somany. It’s strange she has never married ; but I don’t understand her, that’s the sum of it ; I don’t understand her, and I’m going to get out of the way. I’m not going to upset my life with such a half-hearted sentiment ; it is half-hearted, but it might be a great bother.”’ ‘“ ‘He who fights and runs away’—I’'m sure I hope you will live to fight another day. I suppose the matrimonial warfare would make you happier ; but’-—he stop- ped and lowered his tone—*‘I’d be afraid here ; anything for you but unadulterated waxworks.’’ ‘She has mind, though she—?"’ “Though she conceals it as well. as she can—perhaps so. Why don’t you go to Lenox yourself ?”’ There was no reference between Mrs. and Miss Andrews to the misfortunes and misdeeds of the afternoon. Probably they would have perished on the rack rather than come to any open communication on the subject of Alice’s age and her desire to conceal it. Mrs. Andrews was a simple, straightforward old lady, and had reached a stage in life when to mildly boast of her years would have been for her a natural | form of vanity ; but she had learned to | comprehend with maternal sympathy some of the ins and outs of her more complex daughter. Alice’s complexity largely re- sulted from a still passionate determina- tion to recognize the reality of no disagree- able facts. She could make believe as well as when she was four, and in essentially the same way ; it was for herself that she built up the assumption that she was still near her girlhood, playing it was so fay in and day out, year after year. The Another who had ‘‘played lady’’ with her "hen she was a baby understood and played on, though Mrs. Whitman was right, the game cut heroff from most of the pleasures of old age ; not only must she not talk about | period (and, poor lady, she had not a good memory for dates nor much presence of mind, so that she lived in pain for the blunders she made and feared to make), but Alice was always dragging her about into new sets, to new cities, in her sleep- less effort to find audiences ignorant of her too victorious career. To make up for all this, Alice was the gentlest and most de- voted of daughters ; she had come into her kingdom in a day when graciousness and not arrogance was the stamp of social suc- cess, and her manners were as little in- fluenced by time as her complexion. It | was astonishing how pretty she was ; and | though she looked like a piece of Dresden | china, there was nothing pinched or trivial "in her style : it surely seemed she might | have been & beautiful woman had she not | chosen the part of a pretty one. But the part of a pretty woman was what she had chosen and played unvaryingly ; there was no doubt about that ; even her accomplish- | ments—and she had some that suggested | the possession of real talents—were all | kept within the prescribed limits ; she I sang her lovely old ballads and did her | | odd charming little recitations all as a | pretty woman—though she was the only | person of her land and time who could recite in a parlor without embarrassing her listeners. There was, you see, a fine con- | sistency in her pose in life, and perhaps | that helped to impress people, some peo- ple, with the notion that it was a pose, and she altogether a work of art. Of course every body marvelled that she had not married, but I always thought it | was an open secret ; belles have been known to pursue a similar course before. This is my theory : Alice really had ambition, an { inborn longing for distinction, for a career, TF only this desire was far from taking a mod- ern mannish form. She was anjinstance of one born out of due season, gnd in the wrong place as well ; France if the eigh- teenth century was her naturdl, rightful field ; marriage in America did not mean a career, and it was altogether likely to mean the end of the only oneshe had fonnd. Without much money, or anything very illustrious in her family background, she had been, and still was, a great| belle (one must keep to a somewhat antiquated phras- eology in talking of Alice); but to be a belle as an American married oman is a feat to be accomplished only under excep- tional circumstances, and in any case there is here a shadow on the type npt at all to Alice’s mind. It is my opinion that, with out ever so stating the case to herself, she regarded marriage in general as a fate suit- able for commonplace women, but demand- ing from her asad surrender. Then, doubt- less, as has happened to other ladies, she had found the lovers who gratified a poetic ambition—cabinet ministers or foreign lords—very prosiac in themselves, and the attractive men painfully prosiac in their circumstances ; so altogether Alice had re- mained a maid until her younger and gen- erally less successful rivals called her an old maid. Of course she had never asked herself what she would do when she was old, outwardly, really old ; she would not have been Alice had she ever faced an odious question like that ; but still— These ladies did not talk of the warfare of the afternoon, but Mrs. Andrews did note that Emma, Mrs. Whitman, was get- ting fatter than ever, and said she was lazy not to take more exe: