"Victoria is married, and lives in Kansas. She is a fine, intelligent woman, and since the loss of her little girl, last winter, has shown a strong disposition to write. She has the ability to do so, and if her health and her home duties permit, I am sure she will make a clever writer.
"Horace, whom you have seen, is next Victoria in age; he is also married, and lives in New Jersey.
"Two married daughters, Mary and Esther, follow. Mary's mind resembles mother's in her grasp for politics and history, but she inherits her own mother's feeble health, which unfits her for giving expression to her masculine intellect. Esther, who was named for me, is a sweet and lovely woman, and a devoted wife and mother.
"Poor Woodburn came next on the list—a sensitive, silent youth, more resembling his Uncle Horace than any of the other children. You all recollect his sad death three years ago.
"Oscar and Clarence are the youngest of Sally's, the first wife's, children. Clarence is the cleverest of the family among the boys. He is very well educated, and now supports himself as a land surveyor, although not yet twenty years old."
"Where does he live, Aunt Esther?" inquired Gabrielle, "With his father?"
"No; in Kansas with Victoria," was the reply. "I must not forget to tell you that he taught school in Indiana when only sixteen years old, and received a diploma from the State. His half-sister, Eugenia, who is only fourteen, has had very pretty verses published in different New York journals."
"Did Aunt Margaret receive as good an education as you did, when a young girl, mamma?" inquired Marguerite. "I remember hearing you say that you were sent away to school for two or three years."
"No," replied mamma, "her advantages for learning were not so good as mine; indeed, I was her principal teacher. As I have told you, I went to school very little as a child, and the village school at Vermont gave only the most meagre and elementary instruction, but I was always an eager reader of whatever came in my way, as well as an attentive listener, and thus I contrived while in the woods to pick up considerable information. I remember seeing at that time in a neighbor's house, a little, cheaply bound volume, 'Blair's Rhetoric,' which so interested me that I offered to take care of the owner's baby for two weeks, if she would give me the book. A bargain was accordingly made; I 'tended baby' for fifteen days, and received in exchange the precious volume, which I studied until I learnt it by heart.
"Then I saved pennies until I had collected a sufficient number to send to Erie and purchase a copy of Comstock's Natural Philosophy—the first one by the way that had ever been brought into our township—and these two books, together with my self-acquired knowledge, and my own experience of two years as a teacher, sufficed to fit me to enter the Fredonia Academy, and to compete fairly with the other girls whose instruction had not been so dearly bought.