of
words into each other, the slovenly drawl of my father and his men;
watched his manner of eating, his neat disposition of his food on his
plate; saw him move his chair back with a slight expression of
annoyance, unmarked by any one else, as Will Foushee spit on the floor
beside him. All this I observed, in a mood half envious, half sullen,--a
mood which pursued me that night into my little attic, as I peevishly
questioned with myself wherein lay the difference between us.

"Why is this man any better than Will Foushee or Ned Burgess? He is no
stronger nor better able to do a day's work. Why am I afraid of him,
when I don't care an acorn for the others? Why do my father and the men
listen to him and crowd round him? What makes him stand among them as if
he did not belong to them, even when he talks of what they know better
than he? There is not a man round Sandy that could make me feel as
ashamed as that gentleman did when he spoke to me this afternoon. Is it
because he is a gentleman?" And sullenly I resolved that I would be put
down by no airs. I was as good as he, and would show him to-morrow
morning that I felt so. Then came the bitter acknowledgment, "I am not
as good as he is. I am a stupid, ugly girl, who knows nothing but
hateful housework and a little of the fields and trees; and he,--I
suppose he has been to school, and read plenty of books, and lived among
quality." And I cried myself to sleep before I had made up my mind fully
to acknowledge his superiority.

It was one of my greatest pleasures to get up early. Our people were not
early risers, except when work pressed upon them, and I often secured my
only leisure hour for the day by stealing down the staircase, out into
the woods, by early sunrise, when, wrapped in an old shawl, and
sheltered from the dew by climbing into the lower branches of my pet
maple, I would watch the fog reaching up the opposite hills, putting
forth as it were an arm, by which, stretched far out over the trees, it
seemed to lift itself from the valley,--or perhaps carrying with me one
of the few books which made my library, I would spell out the sentences
and attempt to extract their meaning.

They were a strange medley, my books: some belonging to my step-mother,
and others borrowed or begged from the neighbors, or brought to me by
the men, with whom I was a favorite, and who knew my passion for
reading. My mother's books were mostly religious: a life of Brainerd,
the mission