r."

Mr. and Mrs. Lester loved their daughter too well to cast her off.
They at once brought her, with her husband, back to her home again,
and endeavoured to make that home as pleasant to her as ever. But,
alas! few months had passed away, before the scales fell from her
eyes--before she perceived that the man upon whom she had lavished
the wealth of her young heart's affections, could not make her
happy. A weak and vain young man, Fenwick could not stand the honour
of being Mr. Lester's son-in-law, without having his brain turned.
He became at once an individual of great consequence--assumed airs,
and played the fool so thoroughly, as not only to disgust her
friends and family, but even Mary herself. His business was far too
limited for a man of his importance. He desired to relinquish the
retail line, and get into the jobbing trade. He stated his plans to
Mr. Lester, and boldly asked for a capital of twenty thousand
dollars to begin with. This was of course refused. That gentleman
thought it wisdom to support him in idleness, if it came to that,
rather than risk the loss of a single dollar in a business in which
there was a moral certainty of failure.

Disgusted with his father-in-law's narrow-mindedness, as he called
it, Fenwick attempted to make the desired change on the strength of
his own credit. This scheme likewise proved a failure. And that was
not all, as in the course of a twelve-month his creditors wound him
up, and he came out a bankrupt.

Mr. Lester then offered him a situation as clerk in his own store;
but Fenwick was a young man of too much consequence to be clerk to
any man. If he could not be in business himself, he, would do no
business at all, he said. That he was determined on. He could do
business as well as any one, and had as much right to be in business
as any one.

The consequence was, that idle habits took him into idle company,
and idle company led him on to dissipation. Three years after his
marriage with Mary Lester, he was a drunkard and a gambler, and she
a drooping, almost heart-broken young wife and mother.

One night, nearly four years from the date of her unhappy marriage,
Mary sat alone in her chamber, by the side of the bed upon which
slept sweetly and peacefully a little girl nearly three years of
age, the miniature image of herself. Her face was very thin and
pale, and there was a wildness in her restless eyes, that betokened
a troubled spirit. The time had worn on until