ne of predestination," said she suddenly.

Letitia jumped up and stared at her with scared eyes.

"Don't you know what predestination is?" demanded Goodwife Hopkins.

"No, ma'am," half sobbed Letitia.

Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts made shocked
exclamations, and her great-great-great-grandmother looked at her
with horror. "You have been brought up as one of the heathen," said
she. Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat
herself upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination before
breakfast.

The kitchen was lighted only by one tallow candle and the firelight,
for it was still far from dawn. Letitia drew her little stool close
to the hearth, and bent anxiously over the fire-lit page. She
committed to memory easily, and repeated the text like a frightened
parrot when she was called upon.

"The child has good parts, though she is woefully ignorant," said
Goodwife Hopkins aside to her husband. "It shall be my care to
instruct her."

Letitia, having completed her task, was given her breakfast. It was
only a portion of corn-meal porridge in a pewter plate. She had never
had such a strange breakfast in her life, and she did not like
corn-meal. She sat with it untasted before her.

"Why don't you eat?" asked her great-great-great-grandmother
severely.

"I--don't--like--it," faltered Letitia.

If possible, they were all more shocked by that than they had been by
her ignorance.

"She doesn't like the good porridge," the little great-great-aunts
said to each other.

"Eat the porridge," commanded Captain John Hopkins sternly, when he
had gotten over his surprise.

Letitia ate the porridge, every grain of it. After breakfast the
serious work of the day began. Letitia had never known anything like
it. She felt like a baby who had just come into a new world. She was
ignorant of everything that these strange relatives knew. It made no
difference that she knew some things which they did not, some
advanced things. She could, for instance, crochet, if she could not
knit. She could repeat the multiplication-table, if she did not know
the doctrine of predestination; she had also all the States of the
Union by heart. But advanced knowledge is not of as much value in the
past as past knowledge in the future. She could not crochet, because
there was no crochet needles; there were no States of the Union; and
it seemed doubtful if there was a multiplication-table, there was