u are too serious. You are frightened at a
shadow. No one of my friends enjoys better general health than I do."

"And so might the graceful maple say of the sturdy oak in the first
years of their existence. But long after the first had been humbled
beneath the hand of decay, the other would stand with its roots more
firmly imbedded in the earth, and its limbs battling the storms as
vigorously as ever."

Amanda made no reply to this, for she was suddenly struck with its
force. Still she only pretended to loosen her stays to satisfy her
mother, while the lacings remained as tense as ever.

It is unnecessary to trace, step by step, the folly of Amanda Beaufort
through a series of years--years that caused her mother much and
painful anxiety--up to her twenty-sixth summer, when, as a wife and
mother, she was suffering the penalty of her indiscretion, proving too
clearly the truth, that the way of transgressors is hard. In spite of
all her mother's warnings and remonstrances, she had continued to
expose herself to the night air in damp weather--to attend balls thinly
clad, and remain at them to a very late hour, and to lace herself so
tightly as to seriously retard the healthy action of the vital organs.
At the age of twenty-three she married. A year after, the birth of a
child gave her whole system, which had indicated long before its
feebleness, a powerful shock, from which the reaction was slow and
unsteady. The colour never came back to her cheek, nor the elasticity
to her frame. She had so long subjected herself to the pressure of an
artificial external support, that she could not leave off her stays
without experiencing such a sinking, sickening sensation, as she called
it, that she was compelled to continue, however reluctantly, the
compression and support of tightly-laced corsets. And from frequently
taking cold, through imprudence, the susceptibility had become so
great, that the slightest dampness of the feet or the exposure to a
light draught of air was sure to bring on a cough of hoarseness. Her
nervous system, too, was sadly shattered. Indeed, every indication
presented, foreshadowed a rapid and premature decline--consequent,
solely, upon her thoughtless imprudence in earlier years.

"Shall I never feel any better, ma?" asked Amanda, one day, as a faint
sickness came over her, compelling her to resign her dear little babe
into the arms of its nurse, looking up at the same time so earnestly
and appealingly in