se
indeed be faults, certainly in the light of modern innovations they
appear 'to lean to virtue's side.' In fashionable society, such as
you are destined to meet at Mr. Palma's, you will find many things
that no doubt will impress you as strange, possibly wrong; but in all
these matters consult the books I have selected for you, read your
Bible, pray regularly, and under all circumstances hold fast to your
principles. Question and listen to your conscience, and no matter how
keen the ridicule, or severe the condemnation to which your views may
subject you, stand firm. Moral cowardice is the inclined plane that
leads to the first step in sin. Be sure you are right, and then
suffer no persuasion or invective to influence you in questions
involving conscientious scruples. You are young and peculiarly
isolated, therefore I have given you a letter to my valued old friend
Mrs. Mason, who will always advise you judiciously, if you will only
consult her. I hope you will devote as much time as possible to
music, for to one gifted with your rare talent it will serve as a
sieve straining out every ignoble discordant suggestion, and will
help to keep your thoughts pure and holy."

"I suppose there are wicked ways and wicked people everywhere, and it
is not the fashion or the sinfulness that I am afraid of in New York,
but the loneliness I anticipate. I dread being shut up between brick
walls: no flowers, no grass, no cows, no birds, no chickens, none of
the things I care for most."

"But, my dear child, you forget that you have entered your fifteenth
year, and as you grow older you will gradually lose your inordinate
fondness for pets. Your childish tastes will change as you approach
womanhood."

"I hope not. Why should they? When I am an old woman with white hair,
spectacles, wrinkled cheeks, and a ruffled muslin cap like poor
Hannah's, I expect to love pigeons and rabbits, and all pretty white
things, just as dearly as I do now. Speaking of Hannah, how I shall
miss her? Since she went away, I shun the kitchen as much as
possible,--everything is so changed, so sad. Oh! the dear, dear
old-dead-and-gone-days will never, never come back to me."

For some time neither spoke. Mrs. Lindsay wept, the girl only groaned
in spirit; and at length she said suddenly, like one nerved for some
painful task:

"When we separate at the depot, you to take one train and I another,
we may never meet again in this world, and I must say somethin