tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}img"/>

The only toilet preparation in America that has stood the actual test of public approval for over half a century.

It will purify and beautify the skin and remove Pimples, Blackheads, Moth Patches, Rash, Freckles and Vulgar Redness, Yellow and Muddy Skin, giving a delicately clear and refined complexion. It is highly recommended by leading society and professional ladies, and cannot be surpassed when preparing for evening attire.

Price $1.50 per bottle.

For sale at druggists' and fancy goods dealers', or will be sent direct on receipt of price.

Gouraud's Oriental Velvet Sponge

The most satisfactory article for applying Gouraud's Oriental Cream. 50 cents each, by mail on receipt of price.

Gouraud's Oriental Toilet Powder

An ideal antiseptic toilet powder for infants and adults. Exquisitely perfumed. 25 cents a box by mail.

FERD. T. HOPKINS, Proprietor, 37 Great Jones Street, New York

Laurel Vane;

or,

THE GIRLS' CONSPIRACY.

By MRS. ALEX McVEIGH MILLER.

Copyright 1883, by George Munro.

(SWEETHEART)

NEW YORK:

GEORGE MUNRO'S SONS, PUBLISHERS,

17 to 27 Vandewater Street.

for the Woman of Fashion
à la Spirite
C/B Corsets
Straight Front Models

THE MOTHER'S MISSION.

A great Emperor once asked one of his noble subjects what would secure his country the first place among the nations of the earth. The nobleman's grand reply was "Good mothers." Now, what constitutes a good mother? The answer is conclusive. She who, regarding the future welfare of her child, seeks every available means that may offer to promote a sound physical development, to the end that her offspring may not be deficient in any single faculty with which nature has endowed it. In infancy there is no period which is more likely to affect the future disposition of the child than that of teething, producing as it does fretfulness, moroseness of mind, etc., which if not checked will manifest itself in after days.

USE MRS. WINSLOW'S SOOTHING SYRUP.

Guaranteed under the Food and Drugs Act, June 30th, 1906. Serial Number 1098.

FOR OVER SIXTY YEARS

An Old and Well-Tried Remedy

MRS. WINSLOW'S SOOTHING SYRUP has been used for over SIXTY YEARS by MILLIONS of MOTHERS for their CHILDREN WHILE TEETHING, WITH PERFECT SUCCESS. IT SOOTHES the CHILD, SOFTENS the GUMS, ALLAYS all PAIN; CURES WIND COLIC, and is the best remedy for DIARRHŒA. Sold by Druggists in every part of the world. Be sure and ask for MRS. WINSLOW'S SOOTHING SYRUP, and take no other kind.

Twenty-Five Cents a Bottle.

LAUREL VANE.

CHAPTER I.

All the clocks of the great, thronged city clanged out the hour of midnight from their hoarse, brazen throats simultaneously, and as the last tremulous echo died away on the air, a human soul that had wasted its glorious talents, and squandered its heritage of genius in a reckless, dissipated life, was launched out on the great, shoreless tide of eternity.

And in the same moment of time a young, fair, innocent girl, the dead man's only child, was cast adrift, friendless and forlorn, upon the mercies of the cold, hard world.

She fell, like one dead, by the bedside, and the wealth of her burnished golden hair fell like a pitying veil over the slender form that had bent like a flower before the relentless blast of fate.

The coarse, but not unkindly, lodging house people bore her into her own little room, and left her there alone to recover, while they prepared the dead man for burial to-morrow.

It was but a little while that this blessed unconsciousness lasted, when Laurel Vane struggled up to her feet to push back with little, trembling hands the cloud of golden hair from her white brow, and stare with great, frightened, somber eyes out into the strange, unknown future.

What terrible temptation, what love and sorrow and bitter despair that future held in its keeping for her was yet mercifully hidden from her sight by the thick curtain of mystery that ever hides To-morrow from our curious eyes.

The daughter of a genius, who had beclouded his gifted brain with the fumes of strong drink, and who had only written his brilliant articles under the stress of compulsion, and to keep the wolf from the door, the girl realized that she was left alone and penniless, with not a friend to pity or protect her. It came over her suddenly, and with a great thrill of horror, that her father's last article—finished only yesterday, before that sudden illness laid its chilly, fatal hand upon him—must be carried to the publishing house and the money received therefor before she could bury her dead!

Her dead! She could scarcely realize that her fond, though erring father, the profound scholar, the erratic genius who had loved his little girl even while he had unpardonably neglected her, was gone from her for evermore. With trembling footsteps she glided to the room where the people, having robed him for the grave, had left him alone in the solemn majesty of death.

A terrible shudder shook her frame as she beheld that sheeted something lying in stiff, rigid outline upon the narrow bed. Half frightened, she drew back the snowy linen and gazed upon the handsome, marble-white features, to whose pallid grace death had added a solemn dignity all its own.

Great bursting sobs of regret and sorrow shook the daughter's frame as she gazed on that loved face, where in life the stamp of genius had been marred by the traces of dissipation and vulgar pleasures. Laurel was little more than a child, yet she knew that her father had recklessly wasted his God-given talents and sated his soul on the dry husks of life. Yet in all her sorrow and pity, in all her fear of the untried future, no thought of anger or blame came to her as she kept her sorrowful vigil by his side. There were others who blamed him that he had left this tender flower, his "Laurel blossom," as he poetically called her, alone and penniless in the hard, cold world. But she, his daughter, had nothing but tears and love for him now when he lay before her dead.

In a few hours they would carry him away, her beloved, forever out of her sight, but even those last few hours she could not have to spend with him. She was too forlorn and poor to give herself these last moments with him. She must carry his last manuscript to the office and receive the money before she could pay for his coffin and hearse. And already the lodging-house keepers were adjuring her to hasten in burying him. It was so gloomy having a corpse in the house, they said, unfeelingly.

So, at the earliest office hours, Laurel presented herself at the editor's desk with the small roll of manuscript clasped tightly in her little black gloved hand.

The clerk stared almost rudely at the young face from which she put aside the shielding veil with one timid hand.

"A