THE FIRESIDE AT FAR AWAY. 107 



threa dead ones; a little music, painting, polite litera- 

 ture, mathematics, crocheting, moral philosophy, and 

 dancing all in homoeopathic courses; and then was 

 launched out into that practical world where one true 

 lesson learned in life's school counterbalanced the teach- 

 ings of years. 



From the fashionable school she stepped to the mono- 

 tony of an interior plantation life. No musical instru- 

 ments to play on, no foreign friends to talk to, no foreign 

 books to read, even could she read them, where every- 

 thing was simple in action, and the bare bosom of tho 

 world, with its vegetation, minerals, and animal abun- 

 dance, was budding and throbbing all around her, and 

 the springs of domestic life, its great needs and small 

 attainments, its social loves and hates, were open before 

 her. Then came the question, " What is my place, and 

 can I fill it ? If I claim to be a flattered lady and a wife 

 of high rank, I have no beauty and cannot attain it. If 

 I am to be a literary woman, and make my position by 

 my thoughts, I have no education to invent or model 

 them. If a mere waif floating on the stream of life, the 

 very animals on the banks are better than I." She 

 reached out for anything she could do, and turned in 

 every way for some recourse against that nothingness 

 that swallowed her up that dreaminess that all the day 

 filmed her eye, and all the evening upbraided her. 



At length, one day, the first time coining abroad after 

 a severe illness, her mind drank in that confused blend- 

 ing of sound, color, motion, and fragrance, that is so 



