ly have nurtured the little orphan
as his own child, but he could not resist the entreaties of Deacon
Lee, her mother's brother, and reluctantly consented to have her
removed to his house. Yet much of her time was spent at the parsonage,
and growing up as it were in an atmosphere of love, it is not strange
that gentleness was the ruling trait of her character. Deacon Lee was
one of that much-scandalized class, the Congregationalist deacons of
New England, who have so often been described with a pen dipped in
gall, if we may judge from the bitterness of the sketches. Scribblers
delight in portraying them as rum-selling hypocrites, sly topers,
lovers of gain, and fomenters of dissension, and so far has this been
carried, that no tale of Yankee cunning or petty fraud is complete
unless the hero is a deacon. It is true there are far too many such
instances in real life, where eminence in the church is their only
high standing, and the name of religion is but a cloak for selfish
vices, but it is equally true that among this class of men are the
good, the true, and kind, of the earth, whose lives are ruled by the
same pure principles which they profess. Such was Deacon Lee, and it
were well if there were more like him, to remove the stain which
others of an opposite character have brought upon the office. He was
one of those whom sorrow purifies, and had bowed in humble resignation
to heavy afflictions. Of a large family only one son had lived to
attain the years of manhood. The mother of Clara had been very dear to
him, and he felt that her orphan child would supply, in a measure, the
place of his own lost ones. His wife was his opposite, and theirs was
one of those unaccountable unions where there is apparently no bond of
sympathy. Stern and exact in the performance of every duty, she wished
to enforce the same rigid observance upon others. The loss of her
children had roused in her a zeal for religion, which, in one of a
warmer temperament, would have been fanaticism. While her husband was
a worshiper from a love of God and his holy laws, she was prompted by
fears of the wrath to come. He bowed in thankfulness, even while he
wept their loss, to the Power that had borne his little ones to a
brighter world, while her life gained new austerity from the thought
that they had been taken from her as a judgment on her worldliness and
idolatry. She loved to dwell upon the sufferings of the Pilgrim
Fathers of New England, and emulat