d small chance for
growth in the family over which he presided.

For all this, out of his family Mr. Howland was highly respected and
esteemed. He had the reputation of being one of the most upright,
just, and humane men in the community; and many wondered that he
should have so bad a son as Andrew, whose reputation abroad was
little better than at home. At school he was almost constantly
involved in quarrels with other boys; and, from the immediate
neighborhood of Mr. Howland, complaints frequently came of his bad
conduct and reckless annoyances toward neighbors. In truth, Andrew
was a bad boy; self-willed and overbearing toward his companions; a
trespasser on the rights and privileges of others; and determinedly
disobedient to his father. But for all this his father was to blame.
While sternly repressing the evil in his child, he had not lovingly
sought to develop the good. While vainly striving to root out the
tares which the enemy had sown, he had injured the tender wheat,
whose green blades were striving to lift themselves to the sunlight.
Alas! how many parents, in their strange blindness, are doing the
same work for their unhappy children.

Amid all the perverseness that marked the character of Andrew; amid
all his hardness and wrong-doing; his attachment to Emily Winters
remained as pure and earnest at sixteen, as when a child he suffered
punishment rather than give up her society. Emily, who was about his
own age, had grown, by this time, into a tall, graceful girl, and
was verging on toward womanhood with a rapidity that made the boy's
heart tremble as he marked the distance which an earlier development
of body was placing between him and the only one, except his mother,
that he had ever loved.

Between the families of Mr. Howland and Mr. Winters there was no
intercourse. Mr. Howland early imbibed a strong prejudice against
Mr. Winters, who did not happen to be a church member, and who, on
that account, was believed by Mr. Howland to be capable of doing
almost any wrong action, if tempted thereto. Certain things done by
Mr. Winters, who was independent in his modes of thinking and
acting, had been misunderstood by Mr. Howland, or judged by one of
his peculiar standards of virtue. From that time he was considered a
bad man; and, although Mrs. Winters, who was a woman beloved by all
that knew her, called upon Mrs. Howland when the family of the
latter came into the neighborhood, Mr. Howland positively forbad