th a kitchen back of it, and three small rooms
upstairs. Their furniture was limited to what was barely useful, and of
the cheapest kind. Their table was as plain as possible; and their only
servant a very young half-grown girl.

This sad change in their way of living, added to the stings of
self-reproach, almost broke Rosamond's heart; and her pride was much
shocked when she found that her father had applied for the situation of
clerk in a counting-house, as a means of supporting his family till
something better should offer.

At length Mrs. Marbury returned; having hurried back to Philadelphia as
soon as the intelligence of her nephew's failure had reached her. How
did she blame herself for having taken such serious offence at what now
appeared to her almost too trifling to remember. All her former regard
for the Evering family returned. She sought them immediately in their
humble retreat, and offered Mr. Evering her assistance to the utmost
farthing she could command.

To conclude, Mr. Evering's affairs were again put in train. He resumed
his business; and a few years restored him to his former situation.

This sad, but salutary lesson produced a lasting effect on Rosamond; and
from that time, she kept so strict a watch over her ruling passion, that
she succeeded in entirely eradicating it. She grew up a discreet and
amiable girl; and no one who knew her in after years, could have
believed that till the age of fourteen she had been an incorrigible
tell-tale.

THE BOARDING-SCHOOL FEAST.

"They hear a voice in every wind,
And snatch a fearful joy."
_Gray._

It is a very common subject of complaint with boarding-school children
(and there is often sufficient foundation for it) that they are too much
restricted in their food, and that their diet is not only inferior in
quality to what it ought to be, but frequently deficient in quantity
also. There was certainly, however, no cause for any dissatisfaction of
this sort at Mrs. Middleton's boarding-school, in Philadelphia. The
table was in every respect excellent; and a basket of bread or biscuit,
and sometimes of gingerbread, was handed round to all the pupils, every
morning at eleven o'clock. Mrs. Middleton's young ladies were strangers
to the common boarding-school practice of coaxing or bribing the
servants to procure them cakes and tarts from the confectioners; for the
table was sufficiently supplied with th