old lady, and she was a powerful wise woman,
that they who refused to look at a corpse, would see their own every
night in the glass."

"Repeat not such shocking sayings before the child," cried Mr. Gleason.
"I fear she has heard too many already."

Ah, yes! _she had heard too many_. The warning came too late.

She was restored to animation and--to memory. Her father, now trembling
for her health, and feeling his affection and tenderness increase in
consequence of a sensibility so remarkable, forbid every one to allude
to her mother before her, and kept out of her sight as far as possible
the mournful paraphernalia of the grave. But a _cold presence_ haunted
her, and long after the mother was laid in the bosom of earth, it would
come like a sudden cloud over the sun, chilling the warmth of childhood.

She had never yet been sent to school. Her extreme timidity had induced
her mother to teach her at home the rudiments of education. She had thus
been a kind of _amateur_ scholar, studying pictures more than any thing
else, and never confined to any particular hours or lessons. About six
months after her mother's death, her father thought it best she should
be placed under regular instruction, and she was sent with Mittie to the
village school. If she could only have gone with Louis--Louis, so brave,
yet tender, so manly, yet so gentle, how much happier she would have
been! But Louis went to the large academy, where he studied Greek and
Latin and Conic Sections, &c., where none but boys were admitted. The
teacher of the village school was a gentleman who had an equal number of
little boys and girls under his charge. In summer the institution was
under the jurisdiction of a lady--in autumn and winter the Salic law had
full sway, and man reigned supreme on the pedagogical throne. It was in
winter that Helen entered what was to her a new world.

The little, delicate, pensive looking child, clad in deep mourning,
attracted universal interest. The children gathered round her and
examined her as they would a wax doll. There was something about her so
different from themselves, so different from every body else they had
seen, that they looked upon her as a natural curiosity.

"What big eyes she's got!" cried a little creature, whose eyes were
scarcely larger than pin-holes, putting her round, fat face close to
Helen's pale one, and peering under her long lashes.

"Hush!" said another, whose nickname was Cherry-cheeks, so bri