aint of the village, and the muse of
the village school-mistress. She has a peculiar aversion to
egotism, and could not bear to have her mother enlarge upon
her sufferings.

'"Perhaps it will pain the lady to hear that," said the mild,
religious sufferer, who had borne all without a complaint.

"Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth." The poor are the
generous: the injured, the patient and loving.

All that ---- said of this girl was in perfect harmony with
what De Maistre says of the saint of St. Petersburg, who,
almost devoured by cancer, when, asked, "Quelle est la
premiere grace que vous demanderez a Dieu, ma chere enfant,
lorsque vous serez devant lui?" she replied, "Je lui
demanderai pour mes bienfaiteurs la grace de Paimer autant que
je l'aime."

'When they were lamenting for her, "Je ne suis pas, dit elle,
aussi malheureuse que vous le croyez; Dieu me fait la grace de
ne peuser, qu'a lui."' * *

'Next of Edith. Tall, gaunt, hard-favored was this candidate
for the American calendar; but Bonilacia might be her name.
From her earliest years she had valued all she knew, only as
she was to teach it again. Her highest ambition was to be the
school-mistress; her recreation to dress the little ragged
things, and take care of them out of school hours. She had
some taste for nursing the grown-up, but this was quite
subordinate to her care of the buds of the forest. Pure,
perfectly beneficent, lived Edith, and never thought of any
thing or person, but for its own sake. When she had attained
midway the hill of life, she happened to be boarding in the
house with a young farmer, who was lost in admiration of her
lore. How he wished he, too, could read! "What, can't you
read? O, let me teach you!"--"You never can; I was too
thick-skulled to learn even at school. I am sure I never
could now." But Edith was not to be daunted by any fancies
of incapacity, and set to work with utmost zeal to teach this
great grown man the primer. She succeeded, and won his heart
thereby. He wished to requite the raising him from the night
of ignorance, as Howard and Nicholas Poussin did the kind ones
who raised them from the night of the tomb, by the gift of his
hand. Edith consented, on condition that she might still keep
school. So he had his sister come to "keep things straight."