my parents at once was a fearful blow to me, and for a long while I could not think, and was utterly unable to judge what was taking place around me. At the end of three months I was informed that Mr. Stillwell had been appointed my guardian, and then I was taken from school and placed in his office in New York City.
My duties at the office of Stillwell, Grinder & Co. were varied. In the morning I was expected to clean everything as bright as a pin. Then I went to the post-office, and on a dozen other errands; after which I did such writing as was placed in my hands.
For this work I was allowed my board, clothing and fifty cents a week spending money—not a large sum, but one with which I would have been content had other things been equal.
But they were far from being so. I lived with my uncle, but I was not treated as one of the family. His wife—I do not care to call her my aunt—was a very proud woman who had come from a blue-blooded Boston family, and she hardly deigned to notice me. When she did it was in a patronizing manner, as if I was a menial far beneath her.
My two cousins, Lillian and Augustus, were even less civil. Lillian, who was a fashionable miss of seventeen, never spoke to me excepting when she
