be taken from her, for it consists in good principles and a well-stored mind; and an humble, loving, and gentle nature, that will add to all the joys of prosperity as it would comfort him in the sorrows of adversity, prompting her, in either case, to ‘do her duty in that state of life unto which it shall please God to call her.’”
And after awhile Harriet came forward with streaming eyes, but her tears did not now spring from envy or selfish regrets. “Father!” she exclaimed, “in this happy hour, forgive me my haughty selfish conduct. Mary! teach, oh, teach me some of your virtues!”
“I forgive all, Harriet,” replied Mr. Mannering, with much emotion, “for the acknowledgment of your error is half-way to repentance and atonement. And this is a day of triple happiness, for I have just heard that, now my sight is restored, I have a fair chance of again entering into mercantile pursuits, and arriving at independence. But oh! my children, neither in prosperity nor adversity let us forget to pray for true humility of heart—the Christian spirit!”
VICTORINE DUROCHER;
or,
THE BLESSINGS OF PEACE.
by
MRS. SHERWOOD,
and
her daughter, mrs. streeten.
VICTORINE DUROCHER.
It was towards the end of the pleasant month of May, that Dorsain D’Elsac reached Salency, in Picardy, and stopped at the door of his sister’s cottage, a Madame Durocher, who dwelt in that village. Dorsain D’Elsac was one of three children. The elder, Pauline, however, was no more; she had married, but was never a mother, so that the children of Margoton Durocher, his remaining sister, were the nearest relatives he had left in the world. It is true D’Elsac had a wife, one, I must say, of the best tempered women in all Dauphiny,—she was a native of Grenoble, in that province,—but she was now getting on in years, and was often very weary of her daily employment, and yet she had no one to whom she could occasionally entrust her duties.
It was one evening, when complaining of this to her husband, that Madame D’Elsac
suddenly exclaimed, “What say you, Dorsain, of sending to Salency for one of your sister Margoton Durocher’s grown up daughters; as Pauline has left no family, we may ask Margoton to let us have one of her three good-sized girls? Had we not better have one of your own nieces, Dorsain, than a stranger?”
Though Madame D’Elsac, having once thought of this plan, was ready and willing to put it into execution without a thought, not so her worthy husband. He must first weigh the affair steadily in his mind, and repeat over and over again to his wife, that if once they took a relative into their house, they could not part with her as a hired attendant if she did not suit them; “and then you know, Delphine,” he added, “you and I are so happy and comfortable together, that I should not like to invite one to our home who might make that home disagreeable.”