and knew not their names; and they were coming and going on
God's errands of love and light. A soft breath fanned his forehead; a
sweet emotion filled his heart; a burst of light broke like morning on
his mind; and he found it easy to conceive them the touch and gift of
some guardian being whom God had sent with the answers of his prayers.
And who could say but it might be the spirit of Clinton, or Matthew's
ascended mother, whom God had thus employed?

Call it not superstition, if such were his thoughts. It is a guileless
heart, and a lofty faith that can thus sense the presence of God, and
dwell in the blissful assurance that angels guard the inhabitants of
earth, though we see and hear them not; as we believe, at noonday the
stars stand sentinels above, although they are veiled from our view.

At times, moreover, that wild encampment was the scene of social
enjoyment. It was a custom in the settlement to give parties in the
bush, and cultivate feelings of love and friendship. They were rude
indeed, and there was observed none of the pretence of etiquette which
passes for refinement in fashionable circles. Still there was genuine
sentiment manifested, and an honest and simple refinement of soul,
superior to any outward elegance. Some of the settlers, it is true,
were strangers to those religious sensibilities enjoyed by Fabens and
his family; and they read Nature and Humanity with a different eye from
his, and received different impressions. There was that in the manner
of the Teezles, the Colwells, the Flaxmans, and others, which at times
might appear low and vulgar, to persons educated in a different sphere
of life; but even in their hearts, there was an open truthfulness which
gave signs of real nobility; and a full flowing sympathy, a solid
common sense, a love of principle, a love of the good and noble,
against which mere surface refinement and polite words, empty of soul
and meaning, would weigh but as feathers in the scale.

They possessed heart and soul in the richest raw material. They were
full-grown, ripened specimens of aboriginal life. They had a plump
berry, as the farmers say, and came to the sickle without cockle, or
rust, or weevil, or smut. They were as thrifty vines, and needed only
to be trimmed and trained. They were as virgin gold in the bullion,
and wanted to be melted and minted into coin. They were as statues
rough-hewn at the quarry, and would have ripened to forms of majestic
b