M0THER AND S0N.

He knew where he should find her. There was a little, low work-roomadjoining the kitchen that was his mother's sanctum. There stood herwork-basket--there were always piles and piles of work, begun orfinished; and there also her few books at arm, to be glanced into inrare snatches of leisure inside her busy life.

The old times New England house mother was not a mere unreflective drudgeof domestic toil. She sometimes was a reader and a thinker, keenly appreciative inintellectual regions. The literature of that day in New England wassparse; but whatever there was, whether in this country or in England,that was noteworthy, was matter of keen interest, and Mrs. Pitkin's teenylibrary was very dear to her. No nun in a convent under vows ofabstinence ever practiced more rigorous self-denial than she did in therestraints and government of intellectual tastes and desires. Her son wasdear to her as the fulfillment and expression of her unsatisfied cravingfor knowledge, the possessor of those fair fields of thought which dutyforbade her to explore.