When Polly retired from my room, I set myself to thinking over what had happened.  The lesson went deeply into my heart.  Poor girl! what a heavy burden rested upon her weak shoulders.  No wonder that she bent under it!  No wonder that she was changed!  She was no subject for angry reproof; but for pity and forbearance.  If she had come short in service, or failed to enter upon her daily tasks with the old cheerfulness, no blame could attach to her, for the defect was of force and not of will.

“Ah,” said I, as I pondered the matter, “how little inclined are we to consider those who stand below us in the social scale, or to think of them as having like passions, like weaknesses, like hopes and fears with ourselves.  We deal with them too often as if they were mere working machines, and grow impatient if they show signs of pain, weariness, or irritation.  We are quick to blame and slow to praise—­chary of kind words, but voluble in reproof—­holding ourselves superior in station, but not always showing ourselves superior in thoughtfulness, self-control, and kind forbearance.  Ah me!  Life is a lesson-book, and we turn a new page every day.”

XI.

MY FATHER.

I HAVE a very early recollection of my father as a cheerful man, and of our home as a place full of the heart’s warmest sunshine.  But the father of my childhood and the father of my more advanced years wore a very different exterior.  He had grown silent, thoughtful, abstracted, but not morose.  As his children sprang up around him, full of life and hope, he seemed to lose the buoyant spirits of his earlier manhood.  I did not observe this at the time, for I had not learned to observe and reflect.  Life was a simple state of enjoyment.  Trial had not quickened my perceptions, nor suffering taught me an unselfish regard for others.

The home provided by my father was elegant—­some would have called it luxurious.  On our education and accomplishments no expense was spared.  I had the best teachers—­and, of course, the most expensive; with none others would I have been satisfied, for I had come naturally to regard myself as on a social equality with the fashionable young friends who were my companions, and who indulged the fashionable vice of depreciating everything that did not come up to a certain acknowledged standard.  Yearly I went to Saratoga or Newport with my sisters, and at a cost which I now think of with amazement.  Sometimes my mother went with us, but my father never.  He was not able to leave his business.  Business!  How I came to dislike the word!  It was always “business” when we asked him to go anywhere with us; “business” hurried him away from his hastily-eaten meals; “business” absorbed all his thoughts, and robbed us of our father.

“I wish father would give up business,” I said to my mother one day, “and take some comfort of his life.  Mr. Woodward has retired, and is now living on his income.”