Selma knew intuitively that an American woman was able to cook a smooth custard, write a poem and control real society with one and the same brain and hand, and she was looking forward to the realization of the apotheosis; but, though she was aware that children are the natural increment of wedlock, she had put the idea from her ever since her marriage as impersonal and vaguely disgusting.  Consequently her confinement came as an unwelcome interruption of her occupations and plans.

Her connection with the committee for the new church had proved an introduction to other interests, charitable and social.  One day she was taken by Mrs. Taylor to a meeting of the Benham Woman’s Institute, a literary club recently established by Mrs. Margaret Rodney Earle, a Western newspaper woman who had made her home in Benham.  Selma came in upon some twenty of her own sex in a hotel private parlor hired weekly for the uses of the Institute.  Mrs. Earle, the president, a large florid woman of fifty, with gray hair rising from the brow, fluent of speech, endowed with a public manner, a commanding bust and a vigorous, ingratiating smile, wielded a gavel at a little table and directed the exercises.  A paper on Shakespeare’s heroines was read and discussed.  Selections on the piano followed.  A thin woman in eye-glasses, the literary editor of the Benham Sentinel, recited “Curfew must not ring to-night,” and a visitor from Wisconsin gave an exhibition in melodious whistling.  In the intervals, tea, chocolate with whipped cream and little cakes were dispensed.

Selma was absorbed and thrilled.  What could be more to her taste than this?  At the close of the whistling exercise, Mrs. Earle came over and spoke to her.  They took a strong fancy to each other on the spot.  Selma preferred a person who would tell you everything about herself and to whom you could tell everything about yourself without preliminaries.  People like Mrs. Taylor repressed her, but the motherly loquacity and comprehension of Mrs. Earle drew her out and thawed at once and forever the ice of acquaintanceship.  Before she quite realized the extent of this fascination she had promised to recite something, and as in a dream, but with flushing cheeks, she heard the President rap the table and announce “You will be gratified to hear that a talented friend who is with us has kindly consented to favor us with a recital.  I have the honor to introduce Mrs. Lewis Babcock.”

After the first flush of nervousness, Selma’s grave dignity came to her support, and justified her completely in her own eyes.  Her father had been fond of verse, especially of verse imbued with moral melancholy, and at his suggestion she had learned and had been wont to repeat many of the occasional pieces which he cut from the newspapers and collected in a scrap-book.  Her own preference among these was the poem, “O why should the spirit of mortal be proud?” which she had been told was a great