CHAPTEK VIII. 



THE FIRESIDE AT "FAR AWAY." 

 " 'Tis home where'er the heart is." 



Lou Jackson was not a beautiful girl — much less did she deserve 

 the title of pretty. Her eyes and hair were both good, though the 

 coarse and irregular eyebrow gave a masculine cast to her regard. 

 Her nose was short, her mouth almost a line, and her complexion, 

 naturally dark, was further injured by the dry climate that made 

 it colourless. The prevailing pose of her features was thoughtful, 

 at times almost stern, yet once in a long while the lines of her 

 mouth would curve, her cheek slightly dimple, and her eye would 

 flash out a look of recognition and sympathy, the more gentle for 

 being rare. 



She had received the ordinary course of education as practised 

 among American girls. A little geography, a little history, a little 

 of the natural sciences, a little of two or three modern languages, 

 and a little of two or three dead ones ; a little music, painting, 

 polite literature, mathematics, crocheting, moral philosophy, and 

 dancing — all in homoeopathic courses ; and then was launched out 

 into that practical world where one lesson learned in life's school 

 outweighs the teachings of years. 



From the fashionable school she stepped to the monotony of 

 an interior plantation life. No musical instruments, no foreign 

 friends, no foreign books to read, even could she read them, where 

 everything was simple in action, and the bare bosom of the world, 

 with its vegetation, minerals, and animal abundance, was open all 

 around her, and the springs of domestic life, its great needs and 

 small attainments, its social loves and hates, were before her. 

 Then came the question, " What is my place, and can I fill it ? If 

 I claim to be a lady and a wife of rank, I have no beauty, and 



