Edith looked her gratitude, and the long autumn evening wore pleasantly on.
It was at the time when slavery was common in New England. At the close of the evening, Paul and Dinah, both Africans, entered, and the usual family prayers were offered.
At the close of the prayer, the blacks kneeled down for their master's blessing.
This singular custom, though not common to the times, was sometimes practised; and those Puritans, who would not bend the knee to God except in their closets, allowed their slaves to kneel for their own blessing.
They went to Edith, who kissed Dinah on both dark cheeks, and gave her hand to Paul, and the family group separated each to his slumbers for the night.
The head of the little group we have thus described was one of the most distinguished of the early New England clergymen. He had been educated in England, and was an excellent classical scholar; indeed, his passion for the classics was his only consolation in the obscure little parish where he was content to dwell.
He had been early left a widower, with this only child, and all the affections of a tender heart had centred in her. The mildness of his disposition had never permitted him to become either a bigot nor a persecutor. He had been all his life a diligent student of the human heart, and the result was tolerance for human inconsistencies, and indulgence for human frailties.
At this time accomplishments were unknown except to those women who were educated in the mother country; but such education as he could give his daughter had been one of his first cares.
He had taught her to read his favorite classics, and had left the mysteries of "shaping and hemming," knitting and domestic erudition, to the faithful slave Dinah. Edith had grown up, indeed, without other female influence, relying on her father's instructions, as far as they went, and her own pure instincts, to guide her.
The solitude of her situation had given to her character a pensive thoughtfulness not natural to her age or disposition. Solitude is said to be the nurse of genius, but to ripen it, at least with woman, the sunny atmosphere of love is necessary.