MARGARET OF CORTONA was born in the year 1247 at Laviano, a little town in Tuscany. Her father was a small farmer, whose chief thought was for his farm and the soil he tilled. Of her mother we know only that she died when her daughter was but seven years old, and that she was a good woman of simple faith. "0 Lord Jesus, I beseech Thee for the salvation of all whom Thou wouldst have me pray for," was a prayer she impressed upon the memory of her daughter, a prayer which Margaret never forgot. And without doubt the thought of her mother was a saving influence in Margaret's life. Two years after her mother's death, Tancred, her father, took to himself another wife, and with that Margaret's history may be said to begin. The situation is not difficult to reconstruct.A high-spirited, sensitive girl, full of vitality, her whole being athirst for life; and a stepmother whose nature had no response for the girl's, a woman who would brook no contradiction, who worshipped the respectabilities and the order of her own household, and expected others to walk in the narrow way of her own decalogue. With two such natures brought into daily contact, you may forecast disaster. Nor could the father's influence have availed Inuch, even had he had the will. to smooth his child's path. He had committed the error of marrying a woman who most misunderstand his child. Consciously or unconsciously, he had by that act sacrificed his daughter to his own pleasure or convenience; perhaps he had not thought of her at all in his anxiety to provide his house hold with a careful Inistress. At any rate, such evidence as we have points to the conclusion that the new wife ruled her husband as well as his farm-house, and that Margaret was left to bear her burden as best she might.