oad waters of rebellion; and,
if not expecting them to return to her, after many days, with increase
of good, certainly believing that she was mingling them with those of
patriots who were predestined to the brightest meed of glory.

A father is not apt to reason with a daughter; the passions and
prejudices of a parent are generally received as principles by the
child; and most fathers, counting upon this instinct, deem it enough to
make known the bent merely of their own opinions, without caring to
argue them. This mistake will serve to explain the wide difference which
is sometimes seen between the most tenderly attached parent and child,
in those deeper sentiments that do not belong to the every-day concerns
of life. Whilst, therefore, Mr. Lindsay took no heed how the seed of
doctrine fructified and grew in the soil where he desired to plant it,
it in truth fell upon ungenial ground, and either was blown away by the
wind, or perished for want of appropriate nourishment.

As the crisis became more momentous, and the discussion of national
rights more rife, Mildred's predilections ran stronger on the republican
side; and, at the opening of my story, she was a sincere and
enthusiastic friend of American independence,--a character (however it
may be misdoubted by my female readers of the present day, nursed as
they are in a lady-like apathy to all concerns of government, and little
aware, in the lazy lap of peace, how vividly their own quick
sensibilities may be enlisted by the strife of men) neither rare nor
inefficient amongst the matrons and maidens of the year seventy-six,
some of whom--now more than fifty years gone by--are embalmed in the
richest spices and holiest ointment of our country's memory.

It is, however, due to truth to say, that Mildred's eager attachment to
this cause was not altogether the free motion of patriotism. How often
does some little under-current of passion, some slight and amiable
prepossession, modest and unobserved, rise to the surface of our
feelings, and there give its direction to the stream upon which floats
all our philosophy! What is destiny but these under-currents that come
whencesoever they list, unheeded at first, and irresistible ever
afterwards!

My reader must be told that, before the war broke out, this enthusiastic
girl had flitted across the path of Arthur Butler, then a youth of rare
faculty and promise, who combined with a gentle and modest demeanor an
earnest devoti