j^ Life of The 



William Quarter early corresponded with her 

 wishes, and he seemed to have set his heart upon a 

 religious life: for in his very childhood, and while 

 his playmates were building their mud houses, or 

 their little sand embankments to stop a water-course, 

 or playing bo-peep, or engaged in other diversions 

 peculiar to their years, he would steal away from 

 them, that he might be alone, and then he would 

 build his little altar and ornament it, offering up to 

 God upon it the sacrifice of his young and spotless 

 heart. And the sacrifice was accepted; for what on 

 earth is purer, what more worthy of the Creator of 

 all things, than the pure heart ere the stain of sin 

 has disfigured it. 



Mrs. Quarter had received an excellent education 

 in the school of a religious community, and she 

 therefore assumed the task of instructing her son, of 

 opening and expanding the first flowers of his 

 intellect. She was well aware that the common 

 schools of education were to the morals like a 

 Siberian desert to the tender plant reared under a 

 warmer clime. She determined therefore to have 

 the entire management of his early years; and his 

 after life is evidence of her capability and of the 

 manner in which she discharged her duty. 



He devoted himself assiduously to his studies, 

 and he mastered every branch and overcame every 

 difficulty with which he grappled, in a way that 

 showed him to be possessed of a very high order of 

 intellect. So rapid was his progress, that at the age 



