he had toiled
patiently through seven books of the "Aeneid," Parson Manners mildly
sniffed at the inferiority of the female mind, and betook himself to
teaching her French, which she learned rapidly, and spoke with a pure
American accent, perhaps as pleasing to a Parisian ear as the hiss of
Piedmont or the gutturals of Switzerland. Moreover, the minister had
been brought up, himself, in the most scrupulous refinement of manner;
his mother was a widow, the last of an "old family," and her dainty,
delicate observances were inbred, as it were, in her only son. This sort
of elegance is perhaps the most delicate test of training and descent,
and all these things Lucinda was taught from the grateful recollection
of a son who never forgot his mother, through all the solitary labors
and studies of a long life. So it came to pass, that, after her mother
died, Lucinda grew more and more like her father, and, as she became a
woman, these rare refinements separated her more and more from those
about her, and made her necessarily solitary. As for marriage, the
possibility of such a thing never crossed her mind; there was not a man
in the parish who did not offend her sense of propriety and shock her
taste, whenever she met one; and though her warm, kind heart made her a
blessing to the poor and sick, her mother was yet bitterly regretted at
quiltings and tea-drinkings, where she had been so "sociable-like."

It is rather unfortunate for such a position as Lucinda's, that, as
Deacon Stowell one day remarked to her father, "Natur' will be Natur' as
much on Drift Hill as down to Bosting"; and when she began to feel that
"strong necessity of loving" that sooner or later assails every woman's
heart, there was nothing for it to overflow on, when her father had
taken his share. Now Lucinda loved the Parson most devoutly. Ever since
the time when she could just remember watching through the dusk his
white stockings, as they glimmered across the road to evening-meeting,
and looked like a supernatural pair of legs taking a walk on their own
responsibility, twilight concealing the black breeches and coat from
mortal view, Lucinda had regarded her father with a certain pleasing
awe. His long abstractions, his profound knowledge, his grave, benign
manners, and the thousand daily refinements of speech and act that
seemed to put him far above the sphere of his pastorate,--all these
things inspired as much reverence as affection; and when she wished