ges that
follow wealth, had wrought many changes in the heart and feelings of her
husband.

The wear of time, which is supposed to dim the eye, seemed to improve
the ocular views of Joel Newschool amazingly, for he had been enabled in
his late years to see that a vast difference of _caste_ existed between
those that tilled the soil, wielded the sledge hammer, or drove the
jack-plane, and those that were merely the idle spectators of such
operations. He no longer groped in the darkness of men who believed in
such fallacies as that wealth gave man no superiority over honest
poverty! In short, Mr. Newschool had kept pace with all the fine notions
and ostentatious feelings so peculiar to the mushroom aristocracy of the
nineteenth century. He gloried in his pride, and yet felt little or none
of that happiness that the bare-footed, merry cow boy enjoyed in the
stubble field. But such is man.

With all his comfortable appurtenances wealth could buy and station
claim, the retired merchant was not a happy man. Though his expensive
carriage and liveried driver were seen to roll him regularly to the
majestic church upon the Sabbath: though he was a patient listener to
the massive organ's spiritual strains and the surpliced minister's
devout incantations: though he defrauded no man, defamed not his
neighbor, was seeming virtuous and happy, there was at his heart a pang
that turned to lees the essence of his life.

Joel Newschool had seen his two sons and three daughters, men and women
around him; they all married and left his roof for their own. One, a
favorite child, a daughter, a fine, well-grown girl, upon whom the
father's heart had set its fondest seal--she it was that the hand of
Providence ordained to humble the proud heart of the sordid millionaire.
Cecelia Newschool, actuated by the noblest impulses of nature, had for
her husband sought "a _man_, not a money chest," and this circumstance
had made Cecelia a severed member of the Newschool family, who could
not, in the refined delicacy of their senses, tolerate such palpable
condescension as to acknowledge a tie that bound _them_ to the wife of a
poor artizan, whatever might be his talents or integrity as a man.

Francis Fairway had made honorable appeal to the heart of Cecelia, and
she repaid his pains with the full gift of a happy wife. She counted not
his worldly prospects, but yielded all to his constancy. She wished for
nothing but his love, and with that blessed be