and useful knowledge, and that care
should be taken that the mind should first be initiated in the solid
acquirements, before the embellishments of education should be allowed
to take up the attention or engross the thoughts; and that the first
purposes of the teacher should be directed to endeavour to cause the
mental powers of the scholar to be excited, in the first place, to
attain to whatever is most useful and necessary, and that suitable
application and industry was the only means whereby we may gain
celebrity in any art or science, or therein arrive at any degree of
perfection.

"His heart glowed with paternal fondness and interesting solicitude,
when he beheld the countenance of his child sparkling with intelligence,
or traced the progress of reason in her awakened curiosity when any new
object attracted her attention or exercised her imagination." Delightful
indeed were the sensations of a parent in the contemplation of so fair a
prospect, which in some degree recalled again to his bosom some
transient gleams of happiness.

The season was now far advanced in autumn, and the trees were nearly
stripped of their foliage; the radiant sun had in part withdrawn his
enlivening rays to give place to the approaching coldness of winter,
when Alida left her home, amid the innumerable regrets of her juvenile
companions, to accompany her father to the city to finish her education.

They journeyed in a stage-coach from the village of ----, which, in the
course of a few hours, conveyed them amid the tumultuous din of the busy
metropolis. The female seminary to which Alida repaired was pleasantly
situated in the western part of the town, where the refreshing and
salubrious breezes of the Hudson rendered it a healthy and desirable
situation at all seasons of the year.

Although her father had only performed his duty in placing his child
once more at school, yet it was at a greater distance from the paternal
roof than formerly, and when he returned again to his residence, he felt
his situation more lonely than ever, and he could scarcely reconcile
himself to the loss of her society.

All was novel-like in the city to Alida, where she at once saw so many
different objects to excite alternately her surprise, curiosity, and
risibility, and where she experienced so many different sensations,
arising from the sudden transition in being removed from scenes of
uninterrupted tranquillity to those of gaiety and pleasure, of crowded