“When will you commence your work?”

“To-morrow, sir.”

“God bless you, Clara, and give you strength, as he sees you have need.”  He kissed her fondly, and withdrew to his own room.  She sat for some time looking vacantly at the mosaic of light and shade on the floor before her, and striving to divest her mind of the haunting thought that she was the victim of some unyielding necessity, whose decree had gone forth, and might not be annulled.  In early childhood her home had been one of splendid affluence; but reverses came, thick and fast, as misfortunes ever do, and, ere she could realize the swift transition, penury claimed her family among its crowding legions.  Discouraged and embittered, her father made the wine-cup the sepulcher of care, and in a few months found a deeper and far more quiet grave.  His mercantile embarrassments had dragged his father-in-law to ruin; and, too aged to toil up the steep again, the latter resigned himself to spending the remainder of his days in obscurity, and perhaps want.  To Clara’s gifted mother he looked for aid and comfort in the clouded evening of life, and with unceasing energy she toiled to shield her father and her child from actual labor.  Thoroughly acquainted with music and drawing, her days were spent in giving lessons in those branches which had been acquired with reference to personal enjoyment alone, and the silent hours of the night often passed in stitching the garments of those who had flocked to her costly entertainments in days gone by.  When Clara was about thirteen years of age a distant relative, chancing to see her, kindly proposed to contribute the sum requisite for affording her every educational advantage.  The offer was gratefully accepted by the devoted mother, and Clara was placed at Madam St. Cymon’s, where more than ordinary attention could be bestowed on the languages.

The noble woman whose heart had bled incessantly over the misery, ruin, and degradation of her husband sank slowly under the intolerable burden of sorrows, and a few weeks previous to the evening of which I write folded her weary hands and went home to rest.  In the springtime of girlhood, Clara felt herself transformed into a woman.  Standing beside her mother’s tomb, supporting her grandmother’s tottering form, she shuddered in anticipating the dreary future that beckoned her on; and now, as if there were not troubles enough already to disquiet her, the annual amount advanced toward her school expenses was suddenly withdrawn.  The cousin, residing in a distant State, wrote that pecuniary troubles had assailed him, and prevented all further assistance.  In one more year she would have finished the prescribed course and graduated honorably; and, more than all, she would have obtained a diploma, which might have been an “open sesame” to any post she aspired to.  Thus frustrated in her plans, she gladly accepted the position of assistant teacher in the primary department, which, having become vacant by