matters affords a good illustration of the rapidity with which things have moved. In 1879 the proposition to issue $10,000 in bonds with which to build a single decent schoolhouse was defeated by a decisive majority. Ten years later the Board of Education called the leading citizens of the place together, and it was unanimously decided to tear down a building which had cost $40,000 only eight years before, but which was unsatisfactory, and erect in its place the magnificent Central High School, an illustration of which appears herewith, and which has cost $405,000, exclusive of the real estate.

The number of school buildings in use and under construction is thirty. An average of fifty rooms per year has been added for three years past, and still the accommodations are not equal to the demand. The value of the property belonging to the independent school district of Duluth is $1,500,000. The system of instruction is in keeping with the buildings which have been provided. It includes all the best methods, from the kindergarten to a finely equipped Manual Training Department for both sexes, and a Normal Training School where graduates of the public schools are fitted. to become instructors therein.

The census of 1890 showed a population of 33,115 in Duluth; and lest any one should think that the claim of a present population of 60,000 is beyond reason, it may be stated that the enrolment of school children, which was but 3,197 in 1890, is now more than 6,900. A large portion of this growth has arisen from the annexation of adjacent territory. West Duluth, which six years ago was a wilderness of stumps and under-brush, where there is now a population of more than 8,000, and Lakeside, a residence suburb on the lake shore, endeavored three years ago to secure city charters. This precipitated a lively legislative battle, the result of which was the passing of an act setting the time when all the municipalities on the Minnesota shore should become parts of one city. West Duluth became a portion of the city, Jan. 1, 1894; Lakeside came in a year earlier; and on Jan. 1, 1895, New Duluth and historic Fond du Lac will also come into

the corporate limits, which will then be twenty-one miles in length with an average width of three and one half miles.

Besides the public schools, there are ten or twelve private and parochial institutions. Supplementary to all these is a well-selected Public Library of 15,000 volumes. The social side of life is not neglected, and there are many commodious and beautiful homes. The Kitchi Gammi and Duluth Clubs are comfortably housed in quarters especially prepared for their use; while the list of other social, musical, literary and scientific organizations which this young city of the Northwest can already boast of is too long for separate mention. There are both Young Men's and Young Women's Christian Associations, the former in a building of its own, having parlors, reading-rooms and an assembly hall, besides a well-equipped gymnasium. Charitable work is well organized, the various societies finding a common centre in the Associated Charities, with a trained secretary at its head. The Board of Trade has occupied a structure built for its use in 1885, until driven out a few weeks ago by fire. Plans are already drawn for a much larger and handsomer structure, with which the burned one will be replaced. In addition to the Board of Trade there is a Jobbers' Union, Chamber of Commerce, Real Estate Exchange, and Mining Exchange.

Who shall set the limits to the further growth which the future shall bring? Duluth is the farthest point inland which the steamship can reach; and so long as it remains true that transportation by water costs but one tenth as much as transportation by rail, traffic will continue to flow to the nearest point on navigable water. More than three fifths of all the territory west of the Mississippi River lies nearer to Duluth than to Chicago; Denver is nearer by more than 125 miles. And unless, indeed, a route by way of Hudson Bay should prove to be commercially practicable, not only the American Northwest, but also the still greater Canadian Northwest, the possibilities of which are scarcely dreamed of as yet, will find Duluth for all time the nearest point at which the steamship can be reached.

Thirty years ago Chicago had less population than Duluth has to-day. The territory naturally tributary to Duluth is vastly greater in extent and richer in resources than that which belongs to the city on Lake Michigan. Like causes will

doubtless continue to produce like effects in the future as in the past; and unless all the lessons of history shall be set at naught, a city greater than Chicago shall one day stand at the head of Lake Superior.

M

ISS EMILY

was

CRABTREE running a carpet-sweeper over her best tapestry Brussels when the new minister's wife hurried up the garden path and gave a couple of twists to an old-fashioned bell-handle. It was a Friday morning; the tall clock in the hall had just sounded ten, an hour

that found most of the women in Petersville flushed with domestic zeal; but the Rev. Hiram Taintor's better half was usually absorbed by an individual and wholly irrelevant list of pursuits. It was a fact peculiar to Petersville that for some years past its ministers' wives had been either too domestic or not domestic enough; and Mrs. Taintor was easily placed in her proper category.

Emily Crabtree's head had hidden its gray identity in the folls of a green veil,

an unnecessary precaution so far as dust was concerned. Quite an imposing array of spindle-legged furniture stood in confusion at the lower end of the parlor. The moment was a turbulent one for social advantages, though the place seemed sweet and clean with all the subtle suggestiveness of spring. There was a delicate perfume of lilacs indoors as well as out. Soft May breezes fluttered in at the open windows and stirred the tarlatan that covered the gilt frames of partially faded family portraits.

While Emily trembled with apprehension in the middle of the room, struggling to disentangle the green veil, Mrs. Taintor stepped to the front of the house and

looked through the window. A vine outside formed a border for the woman's plump, rosy face, and she wore a bonnet surmounted by little nodding sprays of red velvet cherries.

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Oh, there you are!" she said, smiling. "I was sure you must be somewhere 'round. I'm runnin' by on my way to the library, an' I can't stop a minute. Oh, don't open the door! I can do my errand here just as well. sweepin'."

Go right on

Miss Crabtree's countenance, stern with dismay, faced the window almost wildly. Mrs. Taintor might as well have urged her to go on singing. One end of the headgear streamed over her shoulder, while the other clung viciously, rumpling her hair. She was tall and slender, and severe in outline. There was always a grim tightness about the corners of her mouth.

The caller continued to smile, somehow disclosing a few extra dimples. "I'm so glad you're able to be 'round," she said. “We were reel anxious 'bout your throat at last sewin' circle. As I tell Mr. Taintor, this village ain't big enough to let a single one of its workers be sick in any peace. Why, I've just come from Mr. Timothy Hilton's, an' sick's he is, he's worryin' 'bout flowers for Memorial Day! he feels such a responsibility, bein' the last of the Volunteers. Mr. Taintor says he's failed terribly, an' Mrs. Hilton says he'll never be no more able to do the decoratin' than a baby; but he wants you to save your

lilacs just as usual, so I said I'd tell you. An' I came to see 'f you'd take my place at the next meetin' of the Ladies' Benevolent Society. I'm goin' out o' townto the convention, you know — an' I want 'em to have a first-rate meetin'; they're trying to pack a box for Burmah, an' I want 'em to go right ahead an' do it. I don't want the work to lag just 'cause I'm away."

Mrs. Taintor had been reared in a neighboring country, and she was enabled, through constant practice, to give the vernacular speech a certain adroitness really worthy of note from an economical standpoint.

Emily Crabtree paused midway between the door and window, a faint unreasoning anger coursing through her veins. She had lived alone so long that the slightest discomfiture served to upset her mental equilibrium. Some sort of reply seemed to be necessary, so she summoned one. "I know it," she murmured vaguely.

Mrs. Hiram Taintor raised herself on

tiptoe with pretty eagerness. "Now I want you to promise out an' out that you'll go if you're able to crawl," she entreated. "I want some one that I can depend on if half the village goes to convention, an' the other half's down with malaria."

There was a brief silence. A sudden fear lest the refusal which she was tempted to hurl might uncover the weakness of irritation, darted through Emily's mind. "I'll calc'late to go if I'm able," she answered leisurely. A few minutes later she recovered balance sufficiently to thrust her dishevelled head out of a window and call down the path after Mrs. Taintor's retreating form. "Where's it goin' to meet?" she cried in a shrill tone.

The minister's wife came stepping back to the house, each separate cherry tremulous in the wind; she had only recently arrived in Petersville, and she was as artless and unsuspecting as one of Miss Crabtree's little bantam hens. "Well 'f I ever ! goin' off without tellin', when half why I want it a special meetin' is because it's one side an' a little out o' the village! I'll hurry away without my head some day. It's to be at Miss Deborah Griggs's."

Emily's face blanched; she drew a sharp breath as she looked at Mrs. Taintor searchingly, with a strained earnestness in her gaze. Presently she drew her head into the room, and when she finally managed to speak, her tone was one of mingled hauteur and questioning reproof. "Didn't you know," she began slowly, "that I haven't set my foot in Deborah Griggs's house since the days of the Civil War?"

Mrs. Taintor quailed appropriately. "Why, mercy, no! no indeed. Oh, dear me! I You don't mean it, Miss Crabtree !"

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"I can't go one step," was the answer; so you may's well understand it first as last."

Rev. Mr. Taintor's helpmate wavered between duty's harsh demands and the seductive alternative of retreat. "Well, I don't know 'bout harboring wrath all these years," she remarked at last, her official capacity instinctively leading, after the first shock. "It's forgive us our debts 's we

But the brave little sally was never ended, for Miss Crabtree's voice now drifted out of the window rather brokenly. "Mis' Taintor," it said, "I'm risen' fifty years of age, an' I guess I can 'tend to my own debts. If I go straight along in the paths of my duty, I'll risk Deborah Griggs keepin' me out o' the kingdom of heaven." In the instant hush which followed, a martin dived from his perch among the eaves to an adjacent elm, rustling a spray of tender leaves. The heart of the last speaker was beating nervously; she felt a strange alarm at her own words.

"Well, that's so: I'd do my duty, anyway," Mrs. Taintor responded; and then, with a flash of something like inspiration, she added a bold stroke: "I'd do my duty," she repeated, "an' I'd keep my promises every time; it's the safest way, considerin' how you feel. If I'd promised to go to Benevolent Society, an' I knew I'd been nursin' a grudge for years an' years, I'd go ahead an' keep my promise in the face of everything. I'd have to."

A great thrill swept over Emily Crabtree, sifting latent energies from every corner of her being, until they seemed

suddenly to rush together in a new resolve. She leaned forward to speak to Mrs. Taintor, but a cluster of crimson spheres was dancing along the outer edge of the front fence, while the owner flitted away on her trip to the library.

Emily watched the bonnet breathlessly until it had disappeared; then she finished her sweeping, and slowly dusted all the pieces of furniture, wheeling them still more slowly, one by one, into their places. The lilac-bush nearest the windows wafted whiffs of fragrance over the room; wherever she moved its sweet breath followed her, blending allusions to Memorial Day with the feverish, anxious thoughts of Deborah Griggs, which never left her brain. After a while she went over and closed the windows, hoping to shut out the odor, because she seemed to be standing again on the station platform, beside Deborah Griggs's girlish figure, while they watched together, with misty eyes, the departure of the Petersville Volunteers. Deborah had worn a white dress sprigged with blue: she had not forgotten the gown any more than she had forgotten just how high one pair of sturdy shoulders had towered above the others. The girls had all walked home together afterward, and she remembered that Deborah had wept and that she had put her arms around her. It was thirty years removed, but she remembered everything. "If I go to her house to Society," she said to herself in a sudden panic, "I'll have to speak to her; I can't pretend to be talkin' to somebody else. to say, 'Good afternoon.'

I'll have

This intractable strife between the past and future waged continually throughout the remainder of the day; yet there was a kind of exhilaration in the thought of doing penance in order to be secured from blame in one particular line. Toward evening she tied on her bonnet and walked up the street to make inquiries at Timothy Hilton's door. Mrs. Hilton's sister came out on the stoop with a scared face. "He ain't no better," she said. "He's been growin' weaker all the afternoon, an' he's made his fever worse thinkin' about the decoratin'. I told him some one else 'd 'tend to the graves if he couldn't go; an' I guess they'll have to;

I guess the last of the Volunteers is pretty near through."

Miss Crabtree opened her thin lips and endeavored to speak, but her voice failed her. Once more the little scene at the station rose before her vision, and brought her an overpowering sense of loneliness. "When he's conscious," she stammered, "tell him my bushes are full of lilacs, an' I'm savin' 'em for him." She turned abruptly about and walked home slowly, with stately carriage, her head held erect; but all the way she was counting over in her mind the small American flags in the burial ground on the hill. One of these tiny banners always detached itself from the rest and stood out separately in her mind; it floated. above "Joe Veader's grave" on the eastern slope, in a spot so darkly flanked by evergreens that it had won a name of its own. She knew this grave in Brent Hollow would never receive a flower if it were robbed of Timothy Hilton's yearly offering; and another old resentment against Deborah Griggs was quickened in intensity.

When she reached the seclusion of her quiet kitchen, she spoke aloud to a huge tiger kitten on the hearth. "Why don't she 'tend to it as it should be 'tended, now his folks are dead, if she had an understandin' with him? It's shameful! She never goes near it; she's never put a single blossom on it. I— I can't—” The presumption of the thought forced her voice to break into a sob, and the kitten made an effective response by crossing over to where his mistress sat in all the solemn regalia of her bonnet and gloves, and purring soothingly against her feet.

The last of the week brought gentle rains, and short intervals of summer-like sunshine, with balmy winds saturated by a delicious smell, half of damp clay and half of rapidly budding flowers. On Tuesday morning- the day when the ladies of the Benevolent Society were to meet with Deborah Griggs. the leaves on the elm in front of the Crabtree homestead wore that palest of emerald tint, from behind which interspersing flecks of radiant sky appear mysteriously blue. Emily spent the entire morning in

making a loaf of currant cake. Petersville etiquette required that an assembly in behalf of missions should end as an interior picnic, all differences of opinion which the participants held concerning respective merits of home and foreign work being swallowed up in the pleasant process of sampling one another's cookery. The shrinking at the core of Miss Crabtree's heart made her weak and restless.

She wondered if she would ever have strength to carry her plate of cake along the box-bordered path that led to Deborah Griggs's front door. She had fervently hoped that her larynx might succumb to the dampness; but by frequent tests aimed at the tiger kitten, she found an unusually high-keyed clearness in her voice, the sound of which often gave her a nervous start. Up-stairs on the spare-room bed had been spread her second-best gown, with various other accessories; in idle minutes she hovered above these vapid effigies of her animate self, or stood wearily inert on the kitchen's sanded floor, where her still form was reflected in the polished tins and crockery, which, like so many little oval mirrors, brightened surrounding shelves.

By noon the sky clouded over again, and the little town's main street took on a somewhat lonely look, so many of its parishioners had left "for convention." Emily, ingulfed by her own misery, had never dreamed how large an exodus was taking place. She waited until fifteen minutes past two before she started out, weighted down by the currant cake, an umbrella and a satin bag containing a large variety of worsted work. In closing her gate she glanced over her shoulder at the lilac-bushes. They were great moist breathing masses of white and lavender plumes. The fleetness of life's little drama, and the pathetic hush which inevitably succeeds all strife, spoke to Emily Crabtree from the heart of their bloom.

"I'm glad to-morrow's Memorial Day," she thought, moving grimly on, "they wouldn't 'ave been in prime much longer'n to-morrow.”

At the same moment, alone in her best room, sat Miss Deborah Griggs, feeling the least bit chagrined and consider

ably disappointed over the tardiness of her guests. She knew a large majority

of ladies had decided to follow the Petersville "delegation"; but she did not know that various spring ailments had kept the weaker minority at home; nor was she aware that a few more fortunate dames, who might have put in an appearance, having caught a glimpse of Emily Crabtree gravely moving along in the path of her duty, had discreetly concluded to remain away, although the preparations for an appropriate welcome awaited examination. Everything in the Griggs house seemed to demand the respect which age habitually inspires. The wreaths of roses on the chairs and ottomans, Deborah's mother had embroidered fifty-seven years ago. The tidies were of more recent date, and they were all duplicates of those in Emily Crabtree's parlor, relics of days when two pairs of youthful hands had labored side by side in peaceful unison.

Deborah was dressed in a new plumcolored cashmere, and she seldom stirred for fear of creasing its folds. Her figure was rounder than Emily's, and far more supple in its movements; one elongated dimple at the cleft of her chin relieved the determined, careworn look which time had fastened about her keen dark eyes and stamped in furrows on her brow. She was seated near a window, and she saw Emily Crabtree open the gate and advance firmly over the gravel in the direction of her pillared portico. The sight of the straight, slim figure gave her a shock that left her quivering in every nerve. Before she was able to rise to her feet, the brass knocker slipped from the visitor's tremulous clutch and fell against the door with a revivifying thud.

Thrilled by a fierce excitement, Deborah Griggs walked to the door and opened it. One speechless moment the two women gazed breathlessly into one another's eyes, then Emily ended the silence. "Good afternoon," she said.

Something in the pitch of the voice somehow savored of a righteous devotion to the cause of missions; had it not been for this stray explanation, Deborahs' slow response might have proved more