ver attempted to set up in business for himself, but spent
the whole of the active part of his life in the service of the man to
whom he was apprenticed in his youth. His employer was a druggist of
great note in his day, who made a large fortune in his business, and
built one of the most elegant houses in the State. On his retirement
from business his old clerk continued to reside under his roof, and to
assist in the management of his estate; and, even when he died, Mr.
Huntley did not change his abode, but remained to conduct the affairs of
the widow. In the service of this family he saved a competence for his
old age, and he lived to eighty-seven, a most happy, serene old man,
delighting chiefly in his garden and his only child. He survived as late
as 1839.

Owing to the peculiar relations sustained by her father to a wealthy
family--living, too, in a wing of their stately mansion, and having the
free range of its extensive gardens--Lydia Huntley enjoyed in her youth
all the substantial advantages of wealth, without encountering its
perils. She was surrounded by objects pleasing or beautiful, but no
menial pampered her pride or robbed her of her rightful share of
household labor. As soon as she was old enough to toddle about the
grounds, her father delighted to have her hold the trees which he was
planting, and drop the seed into the little furrows prepared for it, and
never was she better pleased than when giving him the aid of her tiny
fingers. Her parents never kept a servant, and she was brought up to do
her part in the house. Living on plain, substantial fare, inured to
labor, and dressed so as to allow free play to every limb and muscle,
she laid in a stock of health, strength, and good temper that lasted her
down to the last year of her life. She never knew what dyspepsia was.
She never possessed a costly toy, nor a doll that was not made at home,
but she passed a childhood that was scarcely anything but joy. She was
an only child, and she was the pet of two families, yet she was not
spoiled.

She was one of those children who take naturally to all kinds of
culture. Without ever having had a child's book, she sought out, in the
old-fashioned library of the house, everything which a child could
understand. Chance threw a novel in her way ("Mysteries of Udolpho"),
which she devoured with rapture, and soon after, when she was but eight
years of age, she began to write a novel. Poetry, too, she read with
singular