conduct of one of the couple; the conversion of
either to the sect of Shakers. One State, Kentucky,
has gone so far as to pass a law, enacting
that when a husband advertises in the journals
his intention of not paying his wife's debts, she
thereby acquires good and sufficient grounds for
divorce. This last is a very near approach to
Cicero's reasons for wishing to divorce Terentia
—not that she gave him any cause of complaint,
but because he wanted a fresh dowry to pay his
creditors. Longer experience will probably
cause the Americans to make some radical
changes in this branch of their civil code.

UP A STEP-LADDER.

LITTLE Willie had not appeared at my door
for full a month; I missed his cheerful whistle
as he came, day by day, tugging up the rough
road with the heavy bread-basket at his back,
and saw that he had been superseded by another
boy, much smaller and of preternaturally grave
countenance. I waylaid this boy one afternoon
as he was toiling up the hill, and
inquired what had become of Willie. He said he
didn't know. Had he got a better place? He
didn't know. Was he gone to school? He
didn't know. Was he poorly? He didn't know.
In fact, he knew nothing, so I gave him a halfpenny
for his information and let him struggle
on, wondering how in the world he did it.

Willie did not belong to my class at school,
but his two big brothers did, and when I saw
them the next Sunday, I renewed my inquiries
for my merry little friend, and was told that he
had got the fever—the fever in our village
meaning something generated of damp homes,
bad drainage, insufficient water, and sometimes
insufficient food.

"He has had it, going on for a month,"
George told me. I asked if he had had it
severely? " He's been very bad in his head, and
he don't know none of us but mother. But it's his
ears now," was the rather mysterious answer.

I always had a reluctance, difficult to overcome,
to go anywhere where I am not certain
to be welcome. If I were ill, I should feel
inexpressibly annoyed to have strangers coming
about me with pudding and tarts; and, what
I do not like myself, I am chary of inflicting
on other people. But I knew that our clergyman
and his wife, whose kitchen is kitchen for
all the sick poor in the parish, were away; I
reflected that a labouring man with six children,
even though two of them are big enough to support
themselves, is not commonly provided with
a surplus fund against rainy days; so I screwed
up my courage, told my old servant to make a
regulation pudding and put it in a basket with a
few other little matters applicable to the case,
and set off the next morning to look after Willie.

Down a step from the road, down a steep
unpaved cart-way, past an immense mound of
agricultural enrichment, down a sloppy footpath
between currant-bushes bearing innumerable
small rags of clothing but no leaves, down a
series of stepping-stones, and I am at the open
door of Willie's home. Just inside are five
small dots of children, four of them " playing at
ladies," and the fifth, a curly-headed urchin of
about three years old, enacting the part of
audience at the comedy. One of the four, a
blue-eyed maiden of six and a previous acquaintance
of mine, immediately detaches herself from
the rest of the group, advances, drops a bob
curtsey, and then turns sharply round to her
companions and asks where are their manners?
Their manners are instantly made manifest by
three more bob curtseys, but the curly head
proves refractory, retires behind his largest
little sister, and peeps at my basket round the
corner of her elbow, while my blue-eyed damsel
apologises for him as being " only little Robert"
—too young yet to have any manners.

And we all stand and stare at each other, the
children quite at home under the circumstances,
myself feeling awkward that I have not a second
basket to give up to plunder by these infantry,
until I am recalled to myself by hearing blue
eyes communicate my name and place of abode
to her next neighbour, when I ask if they know
where Willie's mother is? Immediately they
all chorus forth, " Mother's gone out ironing at
Mrs. Dent's." I then ask, "Where is Willie?"
to which they simultaneously reply, " He's up
there, in mother's bed;" and following the
direction of their pointing fingers, I turn round
and perceive an almost perpendicular step-ladder,
the foot of which is directly opposite the doorway,
and the head, without any circumlocution,
in a loft. In which loft, when I look up, I can
see hanging, the identical best coat in which
George has attended my class for two years past.

"Will you go up and see him?" asks blue eyes;
and the biggest girl, who may be of the mature
age of seven, darts forward to pilot the way.
But I am doubtful as to the step-ladder, and
suggest the expediency of my seeing " mother"
if she is to be got at; on which all the children,
except Robert, execute manœuvres across
a flat of blighted cabbages, and disappear
round a corner, while he and I improve our
acquaintance by continuing to stare at each other.
In a few minutes the quartette return as they
went, followed by "mother," who stops ten yards
off and makes a bob curtsey of the same pattern
(I detest this curtseying, but I daren't say " Don't
curtsey to me"), and then approaches, looking
as if she were thankful to see me, though I
never saw her in my life before.

She is a pretty woman of not more than two
or three and thirty, with beautiful eyes, delicate
features, and dark hair; all her clothing is clean
and whole and decent; and when Robert butts
at her with his curly head, he is taken up, kissed,
and cashiered with two of the girls who are his
sisters into the house-place, while she gives me
her account of Willie, standing in the doorway.

"He ought to have been in his bed a fortnight
before he was, the doctor says," she tells me.