ld, at least, did not attempt it; he took with
him, however, all those useful and ornamental contrivances in their
several parts, accompanied by workmen skilled in putting the whole
together. Again in his western home, for another year, his head and his
hands were fully occupied with building and planting. For the first two
years of his forest life, he had thought only of the substantial produce
of the field--the rye, the barley, the Indian corn, which were to be
exchanged for the "omnipotent dollar"--but woman was coming, and beauty
and grace must be the herald of her steps. For his mother, he planted
fruits and flowers, opened views of the lake, made a gravelled walk to
its shore bordered with flowering shrubs, and wreathed the woodbine, the
honeysuckle, and the multiflora rose around the columns of his piazza.
For his mother this was done, and yet, when the labors of the day were
over, and he looked forth upon them in the cool, still evening hour, it
was not his mother's face, but one younger and fairer which peered out
upon him from the vine-leaves, or with tender smiles wooed him to the
lake. Young, fair, and tender as it was, its wooings generally sent him
in an opposite direction, with a sneer at his own folly, to stifle his
fancies with a book, or to mark out the plan of the morrow's operations.

More than a year had passed away and Philip Oswald was again in
New-York, just as spring was gliding into the ardent embraces of
summer. This time he had come for his mother, and with all the force of
his resolute will, he shut his ears to the flattering suggestions of
fancy, that a dearer pleasure than even that mother's presence might be
won. He had looked steadily upon his lot in life, and he accepted it,
and determined to make the best of it and to be happy in it; yet he felt
that it was after all a rugged lot. Without considering all women as
mercenary as Caroline Danby, which his knowledge of his mother forbade
him to do, even in his most woman-scorning mood, he yet doubted whether
any of those who had been reared amidst the refinements of cultivated
life, could be won to leave them all for love in the western wilds; and
as the unrefined could have no charms for him, he deliberately embraced
_bachelordom_ as a part of his portion, and, not without a sigh, yielded
himself to the conviction that all the wealth of woman's love within his
power to attain, was locked within a mother's heart.

A fortnight was again the