endship was given only to those who met his views
in every respect; especially whose political opinions coincided with his
own. Indeed this seemed to be with him the one grand test. Though never
meddling in his own person with public life, he had such an abstract love
for its intricacies that he could at all times warm into actual enthusiasm
over a newspaper; a single paragraph from the pen one of his own way of
thinking sufficing to kindle his feelings into a glow of patriotism, while
a civil word of dissent would seem to chill his sympathies for his kind;
strong disapprobation blinding his perceptions to any good possible in
those differing from his established standard. Now it was not to be
expected that the young Lucy's circle would be modelled according to such
restrictions; she loved her kind old father with the clinging fondness of
an unweaned infant for its mother; but though again and again she would,
to gratify him, toil through a whole pamphlet, its meaning as dark to her
perceptions as the close and blurred print to his failing eyes, it may
well be imagined that her girlish brain failed to receive any other
impression from the contents than of their excessive tedium; certainly if
she formed therefrom any opinion regarding his favorite party, it was most
probably the not very flattering one that its members were all especially
tiresome and prolix.

Either from this notion, or a contradiction natural to human nature, it so
happened that among the rivals for the lovely Lucy's smiles, none seemed
to possess such power in riveting her attention as a certain young
gentleman, who although not only the son of a leading man in the
opposition, but holding himself a somewhat prominent place in the ranks of
the condemned party, yet continued with a boldness much to be wondered at
to engross the young lady's time by frequent visits of most unfashionable
length, in spite of Mr. Lee's open vituperations of all the manoeuvres of
the said party. The undaunted aspirant turned a deaf ear however to this,
taking every thing that was said in good part, until one day, when
suddenly his patience seemed to give out.

News had just been received of the marriage of a former school-mate of
Lucy's, the daughter of an old esteemed comrade, orthodox in all his
views, to an individual decidedly in the wrong on the one important point.
First, how astonished, next how entirely shocked, was the good old
gentleman! 'What a falling off! to giv