(for the woman we refer to was Clifford's
wife) bore to each other; like the plant on the plains of Hebron, the
time which brought to that love an additional strength brought to it
also a softer and a fresher verdure. Although their present neighbours
were unacquainted with the events of their earlier life previous to
their settlement at ----------, it was known that they had been wealthy
at the time they first came to reside there, and that, by a series
of fatalities, they had lost all. But Clifford had borne up manfully
against fortune; and in a new country, where men who prefer labour to
dependence cannot easily starve, he had been enabled to toil upward
through the severe stages of poverty and hardship with an honesty and
vigour of character which won him, perhaps, a more hearty esteem for
every successive effort than the display of his lost riches might ever
have acquired him. His labours and his abilities obtained gradual but
sure success; and he now enjoyed the blessings of a competence earned
with the most scrupulous integrity, and spent with the most kindly
benevolence. A trace of the trials they had passed through was
discernible in each; those trials had stolen the rose from the wife's
cheek, and had sown untimely wrinkles in the broad brow of Clifford.
There were moments, too, but they were only moments, when the latter
sank from his wonted elastic and healthful cheerfulness of mind into a
gloomy and abstracted revery; but these moments the wife watched with a
jealous and fond anxiety, and one sound of her sweet voice had the
power to dispel their influence; and when Clifford raised his eyes,
and glanced from her tender smile around his happy home and his growing
children, or beheld through the very windows of his room the public
benefits he had created, something of pride and gladness glowed on his
countenance, and he said, though with glistening eyes and subdued voice,
as his looks returned once more to his wife, "I owe these to thee!"

One trait of mind especially characterized Clifford,--indulgence to the
faults of others. "Circumstances make guilt," he was wont to say; "let
us endeavour to correct the circumstances, before we rail against the
guilt!" His children promised to tread in the same useful and honourable
path that he trod himself. Happy was considered that family which had
the hope to ally itself with his.

Such was the after-fate of Clifford and Lucy. Who will condemn us for
preferring the m