raised above the _possibility_ of humiliation from the
dwarfed natures and malicious hearts in the midst of which she lived.
They could hurt her feelings, they could embitter her days no longer.
To the hopes and pleasures of earth she had bidden farewell. Still
young, still beautiful, she had reached the full maturity of Christian
life, meekly bearing the load of scorn, and disappointment, and poverty,
looking only for that rest which remaineth to the people of God. In her
lonely home, with no friend at Fuzby to whom she could turn for counsel
or for consolation, shut up with the sorrows of her own lonely heart,
she often mused at the slight sources, the _little sins_ of others, from
which her misery had sprung; she marvelled at the mystery that man
should be to man "the sorest, surest ill." Truly, it _is_ a strange
thought! O! it is pitiable that, as though death, and want, and sin
were not enough, we too must add to the sum of human miseries by
despising, by neglecting, by injuring others. We wound by our harsh
words, we dishonour by our coarse judgments, we grieve by our untender
pride, the souls for whom Christ died; and we wound most deeply, and
grieve most irreparably, the noblest and the best.

The one tie that bound her to earth was her orphan son--her hope, her
pride; all her affections were centred in that beautiful boy. Now, if I
were writing a romance, I should of course represent that yearning
mother's affection as reciprocated with all the warmth and passion of
the boy's heart. But it was not so. Harry Kenrick did indeed love his
mother; he would have borne anything rather than see her suffer any
great pain; but his manners were too often cold, his conduct wilful or
thoughtless. He did not love her--perhaps no child can love his
parents--with all the _abandon_ and intensity wherewith she loved him.
The fact is, a blight lay upon Kenrick whenever he was at home--the
Fuzby blight he called it. He hated the place so much, he hated the
people in it so much, he felt the annoyances of their situation with so
keen and fretful a sensibility, that at Fuzby, even though with his
mother, he was never happy. Even her society could not make up to him
for the detestation with which he not unnaturally regarded the village
and its inhabitants. At school he was bright, warm-hearted, and full of
life; at home he seemed to draw himself into a shell of reserve and
coldness; and it was a deep unspoken trial to that