was useless to poor people, who could not feed and clothe themselves with “book learning;” and experience had taught her that those who lounged about with books in their hands generally came to want, and invariably to harm.  It was in vain that she endeavored to convince her husband of the impropriety of permitting the girl to spend so much time over her books; he finally put the matter at rest by declaring that, in his opinion, Edna was a remarkable child; and if well educated, might even rise to the position of teacher for the neighborhood, which would confer most honorable distinction upon the family.  Laying his brawny hand fondly on her head, he said, tenderly: 

“Let her alone, wife! let her alone!  You will make us proud of you, won’t you, little Pearl, when you are smart enough to teach a school?  I shall be too old to work by that time, and you will take care of me, won’t you, my little mocking-bird?”

“Oh, Grandy; that I will.  But do you really think I ever shall have sense enough to be a teacher?  You know I ought to learn everything, and I have so few books.”

“To be sure you will.  Remember there is always a way where there’s a will.  When I pay off the debt I owe Peter Wood, I will see what we can do about some new books.  Put on your shawl now, Pearl, and hunt up old Brindle, it is milking time, and she is not in sight.”

“Grandpa, are you sure you feel better this evening?” She plunged her fingers in his thick white hair, and rubbed her round, rosy cheek softly against his.

“Oh! yes, I am better.  Hurry back, Pearl, I want you to read to me.”

It was a bright day in January, and the old man sat in a large rocking-chair on the porch, smoking his pipe, and sunning himself in the last rays of the sinking sun.  He had complained all day of not feeling well, and failed to go to his work as usual; and now, as his grandchild tied her pink calico bonnet under her chin, and wrapped herself in her faded plaid shawl, he watched her with a tender, loving light in his keen gray eyes.  She kissed him, buttoned his shirt collar, which had become unfastened, drew his homespun coat closer to his throat, and springing down the steps bounded away in search of the cow, who often strayed so far off that she was dispatched to drive her home.  In the grand, peaceful, solemn woods, through which the wintry wind now sighed in a soothing monotone, the child’s spirit reached an exaltation which, had she lived two thousand years earlier, and roamed amid the vales and fastnesses of classic Arcadia, would have vented itself in dithyrambics to the great “Lord of the Hyle,” the Greek “All,” the horned and hoofed god, Pan.  In every age, and among all people—­from the Parsee devotees and the Gosains of India to the Pantheism of Bruno, Spinoza, and New England’s “Illuminati”—­nature has been apotheosized; and the heart of the blacksmith’s untutored darling stirred with the same emotions of awe and adoration which thrilled the worshipers of