shed performer on the piano
forte. Her voice was highly cultivated, full-toned, and beautiful, and
she agreeably surprised me by joining in my perhaps one-sided taste for
ancient composition. Harmony, skill, and kind looks from her beautiful
eyes,--all this so charmed me that weeks vanished like days, and days
like hours in the poetical intoxication.

"I spoke of the family. The aunt too was musical, and accompanied us
when we sang. I also found myself benefited by becoming again
conscious of the talents which I had so long neglected to exercise.
Yes, indeed, talents, amiability, social gifts, and pleasing manners,
&c."--continued Francis after a pause, during which he seemed lost in
thought--"the vanity of possessing these graces have rendered me and
others unhappy. Speaking of the family, I must now mention Ernestine,
an elder sister of my wife's. Their parents had died early in life.
They had lived at a distance from that small town, in what is called
good style. This they did without considering their fortune, and the
consequence was that they became impoverished and involved in debt.
Where this confusion breaks in, where the necessity of the moment ever
absorbs the security of the days and weeks, few men possess sufficient
energy and resolution firmly to hold the rudder amid the tumult of a
returning storm. And thus the wildest and most confused management had
broken into this ruined household. The parents not only diverted
themselves in banqueting, dress, and theatres, but, as it were, even
with new and singular misfortunes. The latter were more particularly
caused by their eldest daughter, Ernestine. This poor being had, when
only three years old, during the confusion and bustle of a banquet,
unnoticed by any one, taken up a bottle of strong liquid, and drinking
it, became intoxicated by it, and thus had unconsciously fallen down a
high staircase.

"The accident had scarcely been observed, and was lightly thought of
when discovered. The physician, a jovial friend of the family, instead
of applying the proper remedies, joked on the occurrence, and hence it
was that those consequences soon appeared in the child, which she
could, in after years, justly attribute to want of affection in her
parents. The chest-bone and spine were dislocated, so that as she grew
up, she became more and more deformed. Being rather tall, the double
hump was more striking, her arms and hands were excessively long and
thin,