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NEW YORK, Oct. 28, 1894.

DEAR MIRIAM,—Your account of your rehearsal of the choir was very amusing. I’m glad you are having such a good time. But then you always could make a good story out of anything. You must have had a hard job managing the choir, and smoothing them down, and making them swallow their little jealousies. I wish I had half your tact. I can sell a man a bill of goods now about as well as any of the clerks in the store; but if I could rub them down gently as you handle the soprano and the contralto, I’d be taken into the firm inside of two years.

And I never wished for your tact and your skill in handling children more than I did last Sunday. I wrote you I’d made up my mind to go to Dr. Thurston’s, and last Sunday he called for teachers for the Sunday-school. So I went up and they gave me a class of street boys, Italians, some of them, and Swedes. They’re a tough lot, and I guess that some of them are going to drop by the wayside after the Christmas tree. I had hard work to keep order, but I made them understand who was the master before I got through. All the English they know they pick up from the gutter, I should say; and yet they want books to take home. So I told them if they behaved themselves all through the hour I’d go to the library with them to pick out a book for each of them. They don’t call it a book, either—they say, “Give me a good library, please.”

And what do you suppose happened when I took them all up to the library desk? Well, I found that the librarian was the tall girl you call the Gilt-Edged. It is funny how I keep meeting her, isn’t it? I was quite confused at first; but of course she didn’t know me and she couldn’t guess that you used to make fun of her. So she was just businesslike and helped me pick out the books for the boys.

Considering the hard times, we have been doing a big business down at the store. Two or three nights a week now I’ve had to stay down till ten. We get extra for this, and I don’t mind the work. By degrees I’m getting an insight into the business. But there isn’t any short cut to a fortune that I can see. There’s lots of hard work before me and lots of waiting, too—and it’s the waiting for you I mind the most.

JACK.