hness of thought and feeling is so refreshing,
that they love rather to prolong the period than to shorten it. To Mr. Lee
the little Lucy seemed so entirely perfect in her infantine simplicity and
purity, that had he breathed a wish for the future, it would probably have
been that she should always continue his _little_ Lucy; he cared for no
change, and as it appeared, perceived none in her. Time passed on however,
and before he had become well aware that the little fairy whose tiny form
must needs so short a while since clamber on his knee to stroke and pat
his cheek, had now shot up into a tall girl, who could take his arm in a
long walk, or canter beside him all the morning on her well trained pony,
there came a change over the course of his quiet household little
startling. Visitors began to throng the hall; not those staid personages
who had hitherto been wont to gather round the warm hearth in winter, or
the sheltered piazza in the hot days of summer, and with feet upreared on
mantel-piece or bannister, discuss the affairs of state, and the price of
crops; new editions of these respected individuals now appeared; nephews
and sons came in their train; young friends, more perhaps than these
gentlemen were before aware of possessing, sought an introduction at their
hands, or came without any, on the plea perhaps of having met at a
tea-party, or some such strong necessity for acquaintanceship with the
fair Lucy; while the good Mr. Lee, often to his not very pleased surprise,
found on awaking from his afternoon's nap, that the book whose contents he
had purposed should perform their daily office of inspiring his dreams had
been laid aside, while the voice which had lulled him to sleep was now
charming other and younger ears in merry though perhaps suppressed
cadences. The variety in these visitors too grew somewhat annoying; new
people came, and Mr. Lee liked not new people. He was a man of warm but
very exclusive feelings; he loved but a few, and he liked no others: his
prejudices were strong, and having lived a very secluded life, the routine
of which presented no very decided obstacle to those prejudices, his
estimate of men and things had not altered with the general course of the
world around him. Liberal to an extreme in his dealings with men, his
intercourse with them, except in matters of business, was confined to a
very limited circle. Absolute in his requisitions from such as approached
him as intimates, his fri