as Ernest, did at length,
however, induce him to consent to the absence of his son for another
year.

This was an important year to Meeta. It brought her an acquaintance
through whom her dormant intellect was aroused, and her manners fitted
for something more than the rude life by which she had been hitherto
surrounded. This was Mrs. Schwartz, the wife of a young pastor, who had
come to assist Mr. Schmidt in those duties to which his advancing years
rendered him unequal. Mrs. Schwartz was a woman of no ordinary stamp.
Highly educated, with an intense enjoyment of every form of beauty and
grace, she saw something of them embellishing the homeliest employments
and most common life with which a sentiment of duty was connected.
Severe illness had confined her to her bed for many weeks soon after her
arrival, and before she had been able to establish that perfect domestic
economy, which renders the daily and hourly inspection and interference
of the mistress of a mansion needless to the comfort of its inmates.
During this period, Meeta, whose sympathies had been deeply interested
in the stranger, nursed her, and planned for her, and worked for her,
until she made herself a place in her heart among her life-friends. As
Mrs. Schwartz saw her moving around her with such busy kindness, the
thought often arose in her mind, "What can I do for her?" This is a
question we seldom ask ourselves of any one sincerely without finding an
answer to it.

We have said that Meeta had access to few books in early life; we might
have added that she had little opportunity of hearing the conversation
of persons more cultivated than herself. Thus were the two great sources
of intellectual development sealed to her. She had a thoughtful, earnest
mind. She loved the beautiful world around her, and the GREAT BEING who
made and sustained that world. But if the contemplation of these things
awakened thoughts of a higher character than the daily baking and
brewing, milking and scrubbing in her father's house, she had no
language in which to clothe them, and vague and undefined, they fleeted
away like the morning mists, leaving no impress of their presence. Her
acquaintance with Mrs. Schwartz, and the conversation she sometimes
heard between her and her husband, gave to these shadows substance and
form, and awakened a new want in Meeta's soul--the want of knowledge. As
in all else, Ernest was present in this. He would doubtless be
intelligent, wise, l