A lady of medium height, slightly built, with dark hair and eyes; goodness and intelligence are written on every lineament of her countenance. In early life her father was able to give her many advantages; with a natural taste for music, she became mistress of the pianoforte, and when her father's physical energies failed, was obliged to teach music for the support of the family. A noble girl—self-sacrificing to an extraordinary degree. When she announced through the village papers, ten years before our story opened, her desire for scholars in instrumental music, the good people of Cleverdale responded with alacrity.
The family at that time consisted of the parents and the children, Fannie and George, the latter a boy of fourteen. Attending the Cleverdale Academy, at the age of sixteen he was graduated with all the honors the institution afforded. He was a model youth, and on leaving school possessed a little fund of two hundred and fifty dollars, earned after school hours by keeping books for a Cleverdale merchant.
His sister, his adviser in everything, possessed a decided character and excellent judgment. She had unbounded confidence in her brother. Assisting him in his studies, she inculcated right ideas of independence in his mind, and taught him the value of self-reliance and education. A great reader herself, she had, by example and conversation, succeeded in bringing him to such a delight in histories, travels, and general literature, that he was considered an unusually well-informed young man.
When George Alden finished his common-school education he desired to enter college, but his little savings would scarce allow him to enjoy the fruition of that hope.
His sister succeeded in obtaining a large music class, while her mother attended to the household duties with such aid as her daughter could give, and Fannie was not only able to earn sufficient to provide the family with necessary comforts, but from time to time placed small sums of money in the savings bank. Foreseeing that George, with his ambition to become a scholar, would desire to enter college, to assist him she denied herself many of the luxuries that all young ladies naturally enjoy.
Thoroughly devoted to her parents, she always said she should never leave them so long as either required her services. Perhaps her resolution would not have been so well preserved if a bullet from a Southern rifle during the war of the Rebellion had not entered the heart of a young Captain of a Cleverdale Company.
At seventeen, George was ready to enter college. With his sister's savings of two hundred dollars added to his own fortune of two hundred and fifty, with an additional sum of one hundred and fifty earned during the past year, he bade farewell to home and friends to enter upon his collegiate course.
Time passed and the boy rose rapidly in his classes. The father's health continued to fail; his mind becoming wholly lost, he was indeed dead to his friends long before the dissolution of body and soul. Although he was a great care to his daughter, the patient girl never complained, but ministered to his wants with as much gentleness as if he were a child. One day the poor broken-down machinery refused to work, and before George could be summoned home the vital spark had fled, and death completed the work begun nearly two years before.
Fannie now resumed her music class, while George, through his own efforts of teaching and doing such work as he could get, was enabled to continue his course at college. Two years later he was graduated with high honors, and returning home found his mother much changed in health, while his sister showed evident signs of fatigue. It then came with full force to him that he must give up the idea of a profession, temporarily at least, and seek employment that would furnish him an immediate income. Unlike many college-educated young men, he did not expect to command a high position, but became salesman with the merchant whose book-keeper he had been previous to entering college.