and his house was a favorite resort for the intellectual men and women of the community.  Occupying an enviable position in his profession, he still found leisure to devote much of his attention to strictly literary topics, and the honest frankness and cordiality of his manners, blended with the instructive tone of his conversation, rendered him a general favorite.  Mrs. Asbury merited the elevated position which she so ably filled as the wife of such a man.  While due attention was given to the education and rearing of her daughters, she admirably discharged the claims of society, and, by a consistent adherence to the principles of the religion she professed, checked by every means within her power the frivolous excesses and dangerous extremes which prevailed throughout the fashionable circles in which she moved.  Zealously, yet unostentatiously, she exerted herself in behalf of the various charitable institutions organized to ameliorate the sufferings of the poor in their midst; and while as a Christian she conformed to the outward observances of her church, she faithfully inculcated and practiced at home the pure precepts of a religion whose effects should be the proper regulation of the heart and charity toward the world.  Her parlors were not the favorite rendezvous where gossips met to retail slander.  Refined, dignified, gentle, and hospitable, she was a woman too rarely, alas! met with, in so-called fashionable circles.  Her husband’s reputation secured them the acquaintance of all distinguished strangers, and made their house a great center of attraction.  Beulah fully enjoyed and appreciated the friendship thus tendered her, and soon looked upon Dr. Asbury and his noble wife as counselors to whom in any emergency she could unhesitatingly apply.  They based their position in society on their own worth, not the extrinsic appendages of wealth and fashion, and readily acknowledged the claims of all who (however humble their abode or avocation) proved themselves worthy of respect and esteem.  In their intercourse with the young teacher there was an utter absence of that contemptible supercilious condescension which always characterizes an ignorant and parvenu aristocracy.  They treated her as an equal in intrinsic worth, and prized her as a friend.  Helen Asbury was older than Beulah and Georgia somewhat younger.  They were sweet-tempered, gay girls, lacking their parent’s intellectual traits, but sufficiently well-informed and cultivated to constitute them agreeable companions.  Of their father’s extensive library they expressed themselves rather afraid, and frequently bantered Beulah about the grave books she often selected from it.  Beulah found her school duties far less irksome than she had expected, for she loved children, and soon became interested in the individual members of her classes.  From eight o’clock until three she was closely occupied; then the labors of the day were over, and she spent her evenings much as she had been wont ere the opening