may take up Daudet's earlier novels and get a glimpse of life during the time of Louis Napoleon. France will become so close to you that just here will fit in Dickens's "Tale of Two Cities," and then while your heart is full of the heroism of a man, you will elect to read a new and very full life of the martyrdom of Marie Antoinette. It is a new life of the queen written by Maxime de La Rocheterie. There you will not only find descriptions of the beautiful women of that day, but you will see pictures of all those who were famous either by their virtue or by their wickedness. A book with pictures is always doubly interesting, and I fancy my girls are like me in that respect. To gain a better knowledge of the women of the French courts read all the books written by Imbert de St. Armand. He begins by writing about the women of the Valois, and goes right through to the time when Josephine won friends for Napoleon by her sweetness and her loyalty, and even later. Having got so far you may choose Carlyle's "French Revolution," but if you find it stupid drop it, for if it tires you it will be of no use to you.
"Ah," says my girl, "you are mixing novels and history, Ruth Ashmore."
So I am, but that is the way I believe in reading. When you read let it be first of all for pleasure and then for profit.
