owning,
or the other contemporary English poets. Amongst the Americans he had a
great respect for Whittier, but he preferred Lowell to the rest because
he had written The Biglow Papers, and he never would allow that the last
series was half so good as the first. These and the other principal
poets of our nation and language Kitty inherited from her cousin, as
well as a full stock of the contemporary novelists and romancers, whom
she liked better than the poets on the whole. She had also the advantage
of the magazines and reviews which used to come to him, and the house
over-flowed with newspapers of every kind, from the Eriecreek Courier to
the New York Tribune. What with the coming and going of the eccentric
visitors, and this continual reading, and her rides about the country
with her Uncle Jack, Kitty's education, such as it was, went on very
actively and with the effect, at least, to give her a great liveliness
of mind and several decided opinions. Where it might have warped her out
of natural simplicity, and made her conceited, the keen and wholesome
airs which breathed continually in the Ellison household came in to
restore her. There was such kindness in this discipline, that she never
could remember when it wounded her; it was part of the gayety of those
times when she would sit down with the girls, and they took up some work
together, and rattled on in a free, wild, racy talk, with an edge of
satire for whoever came near, a fantastic excess in its drollery, and
just a touch of native melancholy tingeing it. The last queer guest,
some neighborhood gossip, some youthful folly or pretentiousness of
Kitty's, some trait of their own, some absurdity of the boys if they
happened to be at home, and came lounging in, were the themes out of
which they contrived such jollity as never was, save when in Uncle
Jack's presence they fell upon some characteristic action or theory of
his and turned it into endless ridicule.

But of such people, of such life, Mr. Arbuton could have made nothing if
he had known them. In many things he was an excellent person, and
greatly to be respected for certain qualities. He was very sincere; his
mind had a singular purity and rectitude; he was a scrupulously just
person so far as he knew. He had traits that would have fitted him very
well for the career he had once contemplated, and he had even made some
preliminary studies for the ministry. But the very generosity of his
creed perplexed him,