rought into subjection by means of
a little angular-headed gold pin, her sole ornament, and a relic of her
old father's days of widowhood, when buttons were precarious tenures. So
much for her aspect. Her character was even more quaint.

She was the daughter of a clergyman, one of the old school, the last
whose breeches and knee-buckles adorned the profession, who never
"outlived his usefulness," nor lost his godly simplicity. Parson Manners
held rule over an obscure and quiet village in the wilds of Vermont,
where hard-handed farmers wrestled with rocks and forests for their
daily bread, and looked forward to heaven as a land of green pastures
and still waters, where agriculture should be a pastime, and winter
impossible. Heavy freshets from the mountains that swelled their rushing
brooks into annual torrents, and snow-drifts that covered five-rail
fences a foot above the posts and blocked up the turnpike-road for
weeks, caused this congregation fully to appreciate Parson Manners's
favorite hymns,--

"There is a land of pure delight,"

and

"On Jordan's stormy banks I stand."

Indeed, one irreverent, but "pretty smart feller," who lived on the top
of a hill known as Drift Hill, where certain adventurous farmers dwelt
for the sake of its smooth sheep-pastures, was heard to say, after a
mighty sermon by Parson Manners about the seven-times heated furnaces
of judgment reserved for the wicked, that "Parson hadn't better try to
skeer Drift-Hillers with a hot place; 't wouldn't more 'n jest warm 'em
through down there, arter a real snappin' winter."

In this out-of-the-way nook was Lucinda Jane Ann born and bred. Her
mother was like her in many things,--just such a cheery, round-faced
little body, but with no more mind than found ample scope for itself in
superintending the affairs of house and farm, and vigorously "seeing to"
her husband and child. So, while Mrs. Manners baked, and washed, and
ironed, and sewed, and knit, and set the sweetest example of quiet
goodness and industry to all her flock, without knowing she _could_ set
an example, or be followed as one, the Parson amused himself, between
sermons of powerful doctrine and parochial duties of a more human
interest, with educating Lucinda, whose intellect was more like his
own than her mother's. A strange training it was for a young
girl,--mathematics, metaphysics, Latin, theology of the driest sort;
and after an utter failure at Greek and Hebrew, though s