ns.

Mrs. Williamson, who was the daughter of a small farmer, had, in her
youth, received the elements of a good English education. She could read
with tolerable fluency, and had taught her children this important
branch; but though, when a child, she had learned to write, want of
practice and varied duties connected with her toilsome condition, had
almost erased the power from memory; and it was with deep regret at her
own neglect, that she found her children growing up as ignorant, as
herself, of the power of communicating their thoughts through the medium
of the pen. It was, therefore, with no small delight, that she had
hailed Agnes's welcome offer; and as she sat, evening after evening, in
her corner by the fireside, apparently busily engaged in knitting, but,
in reality, an attentive listener to the instruction Agnes was imparting
to the young people,--or as she mingled her tones with theirs who, on
the Sabbath, warbled, from hearts attuned to devotion, those melodies
that had been familiar to her from childhood,--again and again, would
memory revert to the happy days of her infancy and youth, when with
beloved parents and friends she had gone up to the house of God, and
while a tear of sorrow and penitence would steal down her cheeks, to
think how much of the instructions, then received, had been forgotten,
she blessed the Parental Hand that had placed beneath her roof, one so
fitted to counsel and comfort, to prove to her, as well as to many
others, a ministering angel indeed.

Thus, happily and usefully employed, the winter months glided by
comparatively swiftly to Agnes. Not that the past was forgotten,--not
that she never sighed for more congenial society, for the friends of her
early youth, or even for the refinement and luxuries by which she had
been surrounded,--that would be affirming too much, for she had a
genuine woman's heart, and that innate perception and love of the
beautiful, which delights in the elegancies and embellishments of life,
and could not as easily accommodate itself, as some could, to a
situation where those are wholly wanting.

There were hours when she felt herself an exile, indeed; hours when
Ellen's young companions would flock to the cottage, and talk and laugh
over subjects in which it was impossible for Agnes to feel any interest;
it was then, more especially perhaps, she thought of home, and of the
educated and refined society in which she had been accustomed to mingle,
and