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absorbed in prayer. The old woman, crouched on | Senor Gitano! stand last on the line, and you are the ground, plied her knitting-needles with great safe." diligence; her lips moved rapidly, but no sound escaped from them; and she had so placed herself as to be able to peer through the slight separation between two of the men who stood before her.

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Mina now advanced a few paces in front of his staff-officers, and thus addressed the villagers :"I know that, two days ago, three mortars passed through your village on their way to Elizondo, and that, yesterday, they were brought back. I also know that they have been concealed in this vicinity with the knowledge of the ants where are they?"

Not a syllable was uttered in reply. "Where are the guns?" cried Mina, with a loud voice and irritated manner-" the mortars you decorated with garlands, because you supposed they were shortly to be used against the queen's forces?"

The people continued silent.

The stranger looked intently for an instant at the lad, who rubbed the palms of his hands together, and glanced confidently towards the extremity of the line of men now almost formed. The gipsy contrived to place himself the last.

Silence having been commanded and obtained, Mina said, "This is the last moment-confession or decimation." No answer, no sign.

"Sergeant, do your duty," said the general. Immediately a non-commissioned officer began counting along the line. On arriving at the tenth inhabit-man, he was made to stand forth. The sergeant then went on reckoning in like manner. Four more were thus selected. The sergeant recommenced counting. There were but nine left, the gipsy being the ninth. The rank was closed up again, and the five men were left standing about a yard in front of the others. An officer and eight soldiers now marched into the centre of the plaza ; and the villager, who had the unenviable preceWhilst this was going on-the eyes of the staff- dency in this mournful selection, was led to the officers and the troops being all fixed on the gen-general, who thus addressed him: "Reveal the eral and the villagers-the cura had managed to hiding-place, and you are safe. I should rejoice glide into a narrow alley by the side of the church, if your life could be spared." (at the back of which, by a strange oversight, no sentinel had been placed,) then darting down a lane, he crossed a rivulet at the end, and plunged into a dell covered with brush wood; thence, through paths well known to him, he bent his course towards a small town about a league off, where he knew there was a Carlist garrison.

Mina, finding he could not make any impression on the determined people before him, turned sharply round with the intention of commanding the cura to use his influence to induce them to give him the information he required; not seeing him, he said, "Where is the cura? Search the church!-search his house!"

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Senor," replied the prisoner, a fine young man, “I know it not.”

Mina rode to the front of the line of villagers and said, "Will any of you confess, and save this youth?"

"The mortars did not pass through the village on their return," cried the men.

Mina then rode to the rear, and questioned the women.

"General, general," they all shrieked together, "we know nothing of the mortars. Spare him, spare him; be merciful, for the love of God!"

This reply this appeal for mercy-had scarcely been sent forth, ere a young and beautiful woman In the former there was not a living being; and rushed from the group, and falling on her knees at the latter only the ama, or housekeeper, a good- before Mina, exclaimed in imploring accents, looking young woman, who declared that she had" Spare, oh spare my brother! He was all yesnot seen his reverence since he was summoned to the general's presence early in the morning.

This being reported to Mina, he shrugged his shoulders, and proceeded once more to harangue the multitude:-"Well," he said, "you appear resolved to refuse giving me the information I ask for now, listen to the voice of Mina, who never promises nor threatens in vain. If, in one quarter of an hour by this watch, (drawing it from his pocket,) the place where the Carlist mortars are hidden be not divulged, I will decimate the men now before me. Every tenth man shall be instantly shot: decide for yourselves."

terday in the mountains cutting wood, and did not return till after nightfall."

"There is no remedy," replied Mina, "unless the secret be disclosed."

Five minutes after Mina's return to the spot where his staff were assembled, the young man was led to the wall of a house fronting the plaza, his arms were pinioned, and a handkerchief was tied over his face. He was then shot dead by four soldiers, who all fired at one and the same instant. Three more shared a similar fate, after every endeavor to induce them or the other villagers to give information concerning the mortars. They all It was a fearful quarter of an hour. Each man met their fate with heroic calmness and dignity. was joined by a female-a mother, wife, sister, or The fifth was an old man. His anxious eyes had one to whom his heart was devoted: the only in- followed each of his fellow-captives to the deathdividual unnoticed by any of the women was the station. His own turn was now at hand. There gipsy. He was a stranger in the village, and be- lay the bleeding corpses of his young companions, longed to a race for which there was no sympathy and he was interrogated as they had been preon the part of the Navarrese, although its mem-viously to their execution. "I call God to witbers were at that early period of the civil war employed on important missions by the Carlist chief tains. He stood alone with his arms folded, and was apparently in a state of abstraction.

The drum was beat-the quarter of an hour had elapsed: the soldiers again began to separate the men from the women. In the confusion, the idiot boy crept up to the gipsy, and roused him from his reverie by saying in a half-whisper, "Ho,

ness," cried the aged man, "that I know nothing of the matter. I confess to having been present when the mortars passed through on their way to Elizondo, but I was not here when they were brought back."

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"Then save his life by confessing," answered of manure; let that be removed; then let them Mina. dig about three feet deep, and they will find the

"We have nought to confess; Francisco is in-mortars." nocent," was the universal reply, to which succeeded a sepulchral silence.

As the old man was being conducted towards the wall where lay the four dead bodies, he passed close to Mina's horse; and at the moment when his arms were about to be tied behind him by two soldiers, he broke from them, and casting himself on his knees, clasped the general's thigh with both his shrivelled hands, crying, "For the love of the Holy Virgin, spare me, spare me! Oh! by the affection you bore your own father, save the life of an aged parent! I never saw the mortars after they left the village the first day.'

Mina moved not; his face appeared as though it had been chiselled out of a block of brown stone. The two soldiers in vain endeavored to loosen the old man's hands from Mina's thigh; he clung to, and grasped it with all the strength of desperation. At length, however, by dint of repeated efforts, he was removed, and having been taken in a state of exhaustion to the fatal wall, he speedily fell, pierced by the deadly bullets.

After this awful execution, Mina said, in a loud voice, "Now let the last man in the line be brought forward."

Mina had observed, immediately after the old villager had been shot, that an interchange of glances full of meaning took place between the gipsy and the half-witted boy; and surmised, all at once, that the stranger might be influenced by the fear of death to divulge the secret.

On hearing the order for his being brought forward, the gitano's swarthy complexion assumed a deep yellow tinge, and he trembled from head to "You have but five minutes to live unless

foot.

the mortars be found," said Mina, addressing the gitano.

Mina instantly gave orders to the above effect; and during the absence of the party-about half an hour-a solemn silence reigned in the plaza. The gitano stood close to Mina's horse with downcast eyes, though occasionally he glanced furtively at the villagers, who all regarded him with menacing gravity.

At length a sergeant arrived from the exploring party, and informed Mina that the mortars had been found. "Your life is spared," said the general to the trembling gipsy, "and your person shall be respected-you march with us."

It took the greater part of the day to get the mortars exhumed and placed in bullock-cars pressed from the inhabitants, who were also compelled to dig up the guns and hoist them into the wains, the owners of which were forced to guide the oxen, under a strong guard.

*

The foregoing narrative, the leading features of which are traced from facts, displays the indomitable spirit of the Navarrese peasantry. Heartrending it is to reflect upon the frightful evils of civil war, which none can fully conceive but those who have been eye-witnesses of them.

THE UNITED STATES.

BY JOHN KEBLE.

TYPE of the farther West! be thou too warned,
Whose eagle wings thine own green world o'er-
spread,

Touching two oceans; wherefore hast thou scorned
Thy father's God, O proud and full of bread?
Why lies the cross unhonored on thy ground,
While in mid-air thy stars and arrows flaunt?
That sheaf of darts, will it not fall unbound,
Except, disrobed of thy vain earthly vaunt,
Thou bring it to the blessed, where saints and
angels haunt?

The moral construction of the gipsy was of a very different nature to that of the peasantry of the northern provinces of Spain, although he had been a zealous hired agent of the Carlist junta in stirring up the people to the pitch of enthusiasm to which the Navarrese had been wrought at that period, under the idea that all their rights, privileges; The holy seed, by Heaven's peculiar grace, and religious observances were at stake, and could only be secured by the annihilation of the Chris-Is rooted here and there in thy dark woods; tinos. He had expected to escape by means of But many a rank weed round it grows apace, the position in which he had contrived to place himself on the line of villagers, and had therefore remained silent during the previous interrogations; but now, finding that the very manoeuvres he had put in practice to save his life had, on the contrary, brought him to the verge of destruction, he lost all command over himself. In tremulous accents he begged permission to speak privately to the general. He was led, tottering from fright, to the side of his horse. Mina was obliged to stoop to listen to his almost inaudible whisper, rendered doubly indistinct by the chattering of his teeth. "Senor Mina, my general," he muttered, "If I divulge the secret, will you take me with you? Will you protect me from the vengeance of these villagers?"

And Mammon builds beside thy mighty floods,
O'ertopping Nature, braving Nature's God;
Oh, while thou yet hast room, fair, fruitful land,
Ere war and want have stained thy virgin sod,
Mark thee a place on high, a glorious stand,
Whence Truth her sign may make o'er forests,

"I will," answered Mina.

"Then-send a party of soldiers, with some pioneers, down the lane to the left of the church, and when they arrive at a spot where there are three evergreen oaks, let them turn into a field to the right; in the centre of it they will see a heap

lake and strand.

Eastward, this hour, perchance thou turns't thine

ear,

Blend sounds of ruin from a land once dear
Listening if haply with the surging sea,
To Heaven. O trying hour for thee!
Tyre mock'd when Salem fell!

Where now is

Tyre?
Heaven was against her. Nations, thick as waves,
Burst o'er her walls, to ocean doomed and fire;
Her towers, and lone sands heap her crowned
And now her tideless water idly laves
merchants' graves.

* Author of "The Christian Year."

YOUNG MRS.

From the Edinburgh Tales.

ROBERTS' THREE CHRISTMAS all day, and sang like a lark, "Fur beyond the

DINNERS.

CHAPTER I.

us, Sally was chiefly noticeable as a well-tempered, industrious girl, who cheerily scrubbed and dusted Mountains," and other Welsh airs. In her new service she became more prudent and less girlish, which increased my concern when she came forTHOUGH an old bachelor myself, I have always mally to announce her marriage. No folly that had a fancy for visiting new-married people. I girls like her can possibly commit in the way of cannot, however, pretend that I have been able matrimony, will ever excite my surprise. Her to approve of above half the unions my young intended husband was a boot-closer. He could friends are pleased to form. Yet I am so little of make his couple of guineas a-week, if he liked to a Malthusian philosopher as never to have been keep steady; and needed never be out of employable to comprehend how Jerry Jenkins is to be ment, if he chose to work. Ifs and buts spoil many dissuaded from intermarrying with his beloved a good charter; and it proved so with Sally Owen, Jenny Jones, because their remote posterity may who wept all night over my warnings and Nurse chance to add an inconvenient fraction to the living Wilks' scolding prophecies, and married in the thirty millions of the British Isles, and probably morning in very tolerable spirits. become a burden, at some time or other, on the This was all past by two months or more, and parishes of De-la-mere-cum-Diss. But whether II visited her tidy single room, not to hear more of approved the marriage or not, where I liked the her husband's faults, but much better pleased to parties, and the deed was done, I have always listen to her shy praise of his kindness and steadfound it pleasant to visit them, as soon as the iness; and that in one week he had earned fifty first blush of the affair was over, and the sober shillings!—and placed it in her hand. I hoped household-moon rising over, whether that of pure she would take care of it, and so, with good honey, or of treacle and butter. I like to look wishes embodying good advice, I left my compliupon the first home, however humble, in which ments for Mr. Hardy, the extraordinary bootthe young bride has shrined so many fond hopes; closer, who could work miracles when he liked; and to witness the effects of the heart-taught taste and placed my gift of Franklin's Life on a little which has adorned her bower in the brick-and-mor-rack above Sally's drawers. tar wilderness. Then there are to be seen the Joseph Green was a member of the Society of little tokens of the affection and good-will of dis- Friends. He was the eldest son of my old friend, tant friends, which surround her like tributes and Joseph Green the draper, to whose long-estabtrophies. There is, too, the indescribable flutter lished business he had lately succeeded. About of a vanity, now first divided between her own the same time a courtship, if such it might be pretty person, decked in its bridal garniture, and called, of some three or four years' duration, had her pretty sofas and window curtains; both re-been brought to a close by Joseph marrying, with pressed by the matronly dignity of a woman to the full approbation of all concerned, the eldest whom belongs, of sole right, a certain number of daughter of a cloth manufacturer in Yorkshire, silver spoons, and china cups and saucers, and who, I need not say, was a member of the same the whole consolidated by the awful responsibility society. The fair Quaker, I found endowed with of her who bears three small keys of office upon a a competent share of the comely and intelligent steel or silver ring, and has a six inch account looks which distinguish the females of her benefibook, "to chronicle small beer," locked in a new cent sect. I was pleased with her manners, her rosewood eighteen-inch writing desk-and who, conversation, her comfortable and well-arranged you see by her face, nobly resolves to do her duty, abode; pleased, but not yet particularly interested, as becomes a married woman, who has the respon-nor in the least charmed. Perhaps I was too late sibility of laying out money, and of keeping house of paying my marriage visit to this serenely sensifor herself and another, who may never yet have ble person, who, for aught that I saw, might have taken her capacity for domestic management into been married for seven years. much account. There may be, nay, there are, many giddy-headed, shallow-hearted creatures, who feel all the vanity, with none of the tremendous responsibility of this condition. My business, at present, is not with them.

So far as human beings may dare to calculate on the course of human events, it was clear that this was to be a soberly happy couple, and theirs a flourishing household, established on the sure basis of prudence, mutual esteem, rational affection, It was my good fortune, in 1829, to pay my competence of the means of a moderate life, perdevoirs to three newly married women, on one haps a little romantic love also, though for this frosty October morning; one of them in humble last I cannot swear; but certainly with a deep and life, the two others in what is called the middle holy sense of the duties and claims of the condition rank of society. Of these marriages I had heartily upon which they had deliberately entered, obtainapproved one-that of my friend Joseph Green; ed by the discipline of a life, and enforced by the while I was doubtful of Mr. George Roberts' customs of their society, and the sanctions of matrimony, and had openly disapproved, and, so their peculiar institutions. Chance had thrown far as my advice went, opposed the wedding of my third bride into the next door of the neat row Sally Owen. This Welsh girl was educated in a of new houses, one of which, while their house public charity; and, from ten years old to eighteen, was building, formed the temporary abode of lived, first as an apprentice, and then a voluntary Joseph and Rachel Green. She was now the servant, under the same roof with myself, enjoy-two months' wife of Mr. George Roberts, my ing in her early discipline the vigilant superinten- brother's confidential clerk, whom I had known dence of notable Nurse Wilks. From our abode from a foolish boy-who had, indeed, grown up she went into a better, that is to say, a more with and among us. He was now neither a fool lucrative service; but our house she considered nor a boy; he was, instead, a sensible and singuher home-her rendezvous on her Sunday-out, and larly acute fellow, above thirty yet it had pleased in all seasons of trial and difficulty. While with him to fall in love, in the previous month of July,

with a very pretty young woman, a governess in a school at Hastings, to whom he had chanced to carry a letter, and whom he had seen afterwards at church, and met two or three times during his sea-side sojourn. My brother and his wife, to whom Roberts was more than an ordinary attaché, thought the thing a more "foolish affair" than they might have done some twenty years before; but Roberts had certainly a right to please himself-which he did, by marrying at Michaelmas, and laying out his savings, and probably a little more, in furnishing smartly the house next door, as I have said, to Joseph Green. He insisted that I should come to see, he did not exactly say to admire, his wife and his house; and I complied willingly. I had already seen her at a party given by my sister, in honor of "the foolish marriage." She was a lively, and almost a handsome, blackeyed girl, about twenty; and if not what ladies would allow to be fashionable-looking, she was at least showy and dressy; vain enough quite, and occasionally affected in her manners, though not yet wholly incrusted with either the scurf sugarwork or worse frost-work of an incurable affectation. Although the assumed fine personage would rise, and obtrusively come between one and the natural woman, it was not yet difficult to doff the shadow aside and come at the real substance.

"Self-same every way; but the Greenes have no drawing-room: there is a very good small attic chamber-What signifies where people sleep?" "Then this is the show-room. It really looks pretty to-day,-umph.”

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"It was so good of Mr. Roberts to leave the decorating of this apartment to myself," said the bride. "I so love a bright, delicate, pale, but not too pale, blue." We all looked round us admiringly at chairs, and squabs, and pillows, all " beautifully, brightly blue," and at the flowered muslin curtains, bordered with blue, and at everything festooned with bunches of "bonny blue ribbons," even to Maria's dark hair. On her varnished work-table, with its blue silk bag, were blue bell-ropes, the twisting and twining of which formed her present employment. On other tables were volumes of neatly bound little books, and vases of artificial flowers, and cards of wedding guests; and the chimney-piece was profuse of 'ladies' work," in its numerous conceits and flimsy varieties. But the most striking, and to me the most provoking part of the details, was the small portable grate, placed within a large bronzed and lackered one, in which smouldered and smoked a few small coal, contrasting dismally, on this chill, lowering day, with the clear-burning fire and cheerful fireside I had left in the next Mrs. George Roberts, like, I fear, ten thousand house. I am not yet done with these details. others of my country-women, had married with Upon the spider-legged work-table, which a puff little more knowledge of the duties of her new of air might have overturned, lay the lady's camcondition, than belonged to the marriage dresses,bric-laced pocket-handkerchief, bordered by her the cake and cards, her ring and its brilliant guard, nicely-clean French gloves, which had been taken at which she glanced fifty times by the hour, her off, that she might prosecute the bell-pull industry; bracelets and combs, and the other paraphernalia and on the handkerchief, a very pretty purse made of her rank and state. Yet there was occasionally of gold and purple twist, with a rich clasp and that about her, which did not bespeak a woman to tassel; half sovereigns and sixpences glancing whom nature had denied either heart or mind, and brightly through, ready to start forth, prompt to I hoped she had fallen into tolerably good hands.do the hests of the fair owner as long as they In those digital acquirements, named accom- lasted. I had no right nor wish to be sulky, nor plishments, young Mrs. Roberts was no mean yet to anticipate evil. There was nothing posiproficient. She also read French, and a little tively wrong, though there might be indications İtalian, and had a natural talent for music, and, of excess of right. There certainly was nothing moreover, an ill-toned, brass-mounted new cabinet irreclaimable, nothing that a year's tear and wear piano-forte, which formed the principal ornament of life, with its attendant experience, might not of the small drawing-room, into which I was rectify. My friend George was so evidently deushered by a fluttering girl in a wedding cap and lighted and charmed with his wife, his house, his topknot. It was a temple worthy of the goddess: domestic happiness and good fortune, that I could yet the general effect at this time, while every-not be otherwise. I could also see that the housething wore the gloss and freshness of novelty, was hold virtues, with their concomitant vices, were airy, and, so to speak, tasteful-French, or Anglo- budding already in the thoughtful heart of his Gallican; and I suppressed the cynical idea, forced | by an involuntary comparison of this apartment with Rachel Greene's roomy bed-chamber, on the other side of the party-wall-and the question, "How will all these flimsies look two years hence, -mistress included?" At present all was glittering, if not golden; and "brightly blue" muslin draperies, coarse gilding and lacker, and spiderlimbed, crazy-jointed chairs and sofas-painted and varnished in imitation of expensive woods-cold. made up the inventory, and-all obtained prodigious bargains!

As we can't afford to give many dinner parties, it don't much signify for the dining-parlor" said George, with the prudent air so becoming in a young husband. "And as we have only a limited sum to lay out in furniture, we have made anything do for the family-room down stairs, to have this one nice for Maria's little parties.'

"But where the deuce are you to sleep? This is your neighbor Greene's chamber through the wall there. Is your house larger?"

bride.

I would have been content with something quieter this morning than the lilac silk frock, one of the principal bridal dresses, and my brother's present, put on to do me honor; but then the motive was so good. Mrs. Roberts was already half aware that frugality was a virtue, hence the bad fire-and industry a duty, hence the blue bellroping, till the poor girl was herself blue with

"You have been calling for our neighbor, Mrs. Greene," said Roberts.

"Is she so very pretty?" inquired the lady. "The Quaker ladies are all imagined so handsome; that odd dress of theirs attracts attention to their faces-yet I am sure it is not in the least becoming."

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"Not in the least, only convenient, and comfortable as clothing. I wish their female costume were more elegant. But I beg pardon. friend Joseph's wife is not very pretty. She looks the mild, intelligent, amiable young woman

My

which I am certain she is. Her face is very English, both in features, and in its serene beauty of expression-the real, not the beau-ideal, English beauty of modern artists."

"The Quakers are not musical, I believe?" "No? I am sorry they are not.-I do not mean exactly musical, that is now an odious hackneyed phrase; but that those whom Nature has attuned to the harmonies of sound, are not allowed to follow her bent. There can be no true wisdom in obliterating the gift of a fine ear, or a delicious voice, because it may sometimes be abused. Rachel Greene has a small bookcase in her chamber, where your piano-forte stands. I should like to see both where there is taste and leisure."

Mrs.

on the completion of the fittings-up, the covering of the ottoman with blue, and the suspension of the blue bell-ropes. I could not resist it. My brother's wife, with prudent consideration of a very small house, took only one daughter to represent the five who were to appear at tea. Roberts had spared neither time, nor thought, nor labor. She had given her orders with spirit; and freely drawn upon the thrice-replenished gold and purple purse. The result was, everything considered, and fair allowance made, a very genteel entertainment. True, we were sadly crowded :many things were forgotten, several lacked of the thousand-and-one requisites necessary to English stylish dinners; and there occurred numerous casualties. Several compulsory levies were made They seem to have very nice furniture though; during dinner on the glass and plate stores of very expensive furniture," rejoined the lady. The Rachel Greene. But, on the whole, though the subject had become of importance to the young thing did not work so well, where hired cook, housekeeper, with whom sofas and tables were hired footman, hired charwoman, hired everything, fairly dividing empire with gowns and bonnets, and threatened to subvert their reign.

66

were strange and awkward, as where there is a well-drilled establishment, we got through the "Perhaps the Quakers think dear things cheap- day, without affording materials to Theodore Hook est. They have excellent, substantial, and even for a piquant chapter on bourgeois pretension; handsome mahogany furniture in sufficient quanti- leaving on the field of action three imitation rosety. This tasty little drawing-room corresponds to wood chairs dislocated, and two broken, many their family chamber. They have no flowery stains on the bright-blue furniture, compelled for muslin draperies-gilding or imitation work:- the day to do parlor duty, with a large lot of black hair-cloth chairs, and couches; and window cracked china and glass, and several plated forks curtains, and carpets of some warm color and sub-reported missing. stantial fabric-I cannot tell you what all they

have."

"And they have no best room," cried Mrs. Roberts, glancing round with triumph on her

arrangements.

66

His

"What's the good of Roberts giving such expensive, fine dinners ?" said my ungrateful brother, (who had praised the venison to the skies, and been helped twice,) as we drove home. wife is but a child, poor thing, but he should have more sense. I must tell Master George this won't do."

They have, and keep it for themselves," cried George laughing. "That is so like Broadbrim." "I presume they may imagine themselves best entitled to the use of their own house. 'Greatest-cuses. happiness principle,'-hey George! Sleep in a dog-hole all the year round, to have a handsome apartment to receive one's pleasant idle friends, once a-month or so.

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"One can't do without one apartment to keep neat for company. Roberts insists on making this our ordinary sitting-room; but as it is fitted up, that cannot prudently be."

My sister made her ordinary good-natured ex"It was the first entertaininent-a marriage dinner; people must be like their neigh bors."

"Well, well; all very good, Anne; but we shall see." What selfish, suspicious wretches prudent men in business are! James was already thinking of another clerk.

On my future calls upon Mrs. George Roberts, I found her always at work, busily employed, as I admired the emphasis, and did not despair of if for daily bread, in embroidering caps and habit Mrs. Roberts yet comprehending the true import shirts, or altering and repairing her own dresses. of the word graced with it. Another trifling in-One day, in the end of March, as I find by my cident I noted. Rachel Greene had herself taken diary, I visited Mrs. Roberts, after having called from her small sideboard the glasses and bright upon her neighbor, Rachel Greene. Indeed, I silver salver required when the refreshment of never went to see the one lady without calling for cake and a glass of wine was offered me. She the other. Both appeared alike anxious to fulfil had but one servant-girl, who had come up with their duties; both were economical and industriher from Yorkshire. Maria Roberts had exactly ous; but with how different an understanding of the same complement of domestic help; but the the domestic virtues! Maria Roberts was, beyond temporary bell-pull gave way, in sounding the all doubt, the most laborious of these fair neighalarum to the kitchen for the supply of our wants, bors. By twelve o'clock, or earlier, any day that and considerable bustle, misunderstanding, and I called, I found Rachel, all the arrangements delay occurred, before the gaudy japan equipage completed that took her to the kitchen, seated in was forthcoming. When I took leave, Roberts her parlor with her plain work. All her work I told me laughingly, that I must come often to found was what women called plain work: making lecture his wife. I had a foreboding that the lec- or repairing useful garments-often of very ugly tures might be required sooner than he anticipated. shapes-without seeming to consider that one kind The question with me was, did Mrs. Roberts of useful seam had greater pretensions to gentility seem a woman likely to profit by elder experience or elegance than another. Her work was very in league with her own; and as I saw no reason to despair of her, but in her energy, activity, and liveliness quite the reverse, I frequently repeated my visits, and always found her busily employed in one useless way or another. The first grand marriage-dinner followed close

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often neighbored by a book; for, as she modestly told me, this year she had more reading leisure than she could in future look to have. At a regu lar hour she went abroad for her accustomed: exercise, and generally brought home my friend Joseph to an early and comfortable dinner.

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