years, and
you must try to think as little of him as possible;--put your mind upon
your duties, like a good girl, and God will bless you. Don't believe
too much in your power over him;--young men, when they in love, will
promise anything, and really think they mean it; but nothing is a
saving change, except what is wrought in them by sovereign grace."

"But, mother, does not God use the love we have to each other as a
means of doing us good? Did you not say that it was by your love to
father that you first were led to think seriously?"

"That is true, my child," said Mrs. Scudder, who, like many of the rest
of the world, was surprised to meet her own words walking out on a
track where she had not expected them, but was yet too true of soul to
cut their acquaintance because they were not going the way of her
wishes. "Yes, all that is true; but yet, Mary, when one has but one
little ewe lamb in the world, one is jealous of it. I would give all
the world, if you had never seen James. It is dreadful enough for a
woman to love anybody as you can, but it is more to love a man of
unsettled character and no religion. But then the Lord appoints all our
goings; it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps;--I leave
you, my child, in His hands." And, with one solemn and long embrace,
the mother and daughter parted for the night.

It is impossible to write a story of New England life and manners for a
thoughtless, shallow-minded person. If we represent things as they are,
their intensity, their depth, their unworldly gravity and earnestness,
must inevitably repel lighter spirits, as the reverse pole of the
magnet drives off sticks and straws.

In no other country were the soul and the spiritual life ever such
intense realities, and everything contemplated so much (to use a
current New England phrase) "in reference to eternity." Mrs. Scudder
was a strong, clear-headed, practical woman. No one had a clearer
estimate of the material and outward life, or could more minutely
manage its smallest item; but then a tremendous, eternal future had so
weighed down and compacted the fibres of her very soul, that all
earthly things were but as dust in comparison to it. That her child
should be one elected to walk in white, to reign with Christ when earth
was a forgotten dream, was her one absorbing wish; and she looked on
all the events of life only with reference to this. The way of life was
narrow, the chances in favor of any child of