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Penelope's Progress

plucked a nosegay for us. Her white columbines she calls "granny's mutches;" and indeed they are not unlike those fresh white caps. Dear Robbie Burns, ten inches high in plaster, stands in the sunny window in a tiny box of blossoming plants surrounded by a miniature green picket fence. Outside, looming white among the gilly-flowers, is Sir Walter, and near him is still another and a larger bust on a cracked pedestal a foot high, perhaps. We did not recognize the head at once, and asked the little woman who it was.

"Homer, the graund Greek poet," she answered cheerily; "an' I'm to have anither o' Burns, as tall as Homer, when my daughter comes hame frae E'nbro'."

If the shade of Homer keeps account of his earthly triumphs, I think he is proud of his place in that humble Scotchwoman's gillyflower garden, with his head under the drooping petals of granny's white mutches.

What do you think her "mon" is called in the village? John o' Mary! But he is not alone in his meekness, for there are Jock o' Meg, Willie o' Janet, Jem o' Tibby, and a dozen others. These primitive fishing-villages are the places where all the advanced women ought to congregate, for the wife is head of the house: the accountant, the treasurer, the auditor, the chancellor of the exchequer; and though her husband does catch the fish for her to sell, that is ac-