Not an hour after he learned that a head nurse was much wanted at the alms-house.  He made immediate application for her, and was happy in securing the place.  It was at once offered to her, and she accepted it with gladness, especially as she would be allowed to bring her two children with her.  In due time, she removed to her new abode, and soon won the good-will and kind consideration of the Board of Trustees, and the affectionate regards of those to whose afflictions she was called to minister.  Her two little girls were educated at the alms-house school, and grew up amiable, intelligent, and industrious.  Of her other children, I never knew much.

Mrs. Williams seemed to think the situation of her sister at the alms-house, almost as disgraceful as her place in the market.  She never renewed a communication with her.  Even up to the hour when Mrs. Haller was called to her final account, which was many years after, her sister neither saw nor spoke to her.

THE MAIDEN’S ERROR.

THE story of Julia Forrester is but a revelation of what occurs every day.  I draw aside the veil for a moment, would that some one might gaze with trembling on the picture, and be saved!

The father of Julia had served an apprenticeship to the tanning and currying business.  He had been taken when an orphan boy of twelve years old, by a man in this trade, and raised by him, without any of the benefits of education.  At twenty-one he could read and write a little, but had no taste for improving his mind.  His master, being well pleased with him for his industry and sobriety, offered him a small interest in his business, shortly after he was free, which soon enabled him to marry, and settle himself in life.

His new companion was the daughter of a reduced tradesman; she had high notions of gentility, but possessed more vanity and love of admiration than good sense.  Neither of them could comprehend the true relation of parents.  If they fed their children well, clothed them well, and sent them to the most reputable schools, they imagined that they had, in part, discharged their duty; and, wholly, when they had obtained good-looking and well-dressed husbands for their daughters.  This may be a little exaggerated; but such an inference might readily have been drawn by one who attentively considered their actions.

I shall not spend further time in considering their characters.  Their counterpart may be found in every street, and in every neighbourhood.  The curious student of human nature can study them at will.  Julia Forrester was the child of such parents.  When she was fifteen, they were in easy circumstances.  But at that critical period of their daughter’s life, they were ignorant of human nature, and entirely unskilled in the means of detecting false pretension, or discovering true merit.

Indeed, they were much more ready to consider the former as true, and the latter as false.  The unpretending modesty of real worth they generally mistook for imbecility, or a consciousness of questionable points of character; while bold-faced assurance was thought to be an open exhibition of manliness—­the free, undisguised manner of those who had nothing to conceal.