couch. A scorching fever, accompanied with convulsions, confined the little sufferer to her room for weeks; but neither the doctor nor old Mrs. M'Elroy knew the cause of her illness; and her little sister was afraid to tell, lest she should make an enemy of the young lady who had perpetrated the mischief. "I would not enter on my list of friends, (Though graced with polish'd manners and fine sense, Who needlessly sets foot upon a worm." As Mr. M'Elroy kept a school for boys only, Musidora and her sister were sent to a Miss Merriam, not far off; and there, too, the little orphans endured every mortification that sensitive children can be made to feel. Old Mr. M'Elroy bought all their clothes, and he knew about as much as an elephant how to do it; so that every old-fashioned remnant was palmed off on him by the merchants; and of course the children were made to wear whatever was bought for them. One morning he took them to a milliner's, to buy bonnets; and she, seeing instantly how easily he could be imposed upon, handed him two bottle-green silk hats, which had remained in her shop from the last season. These he forthwith purchased, though they were large enough for grown-up young ladies; and as there was to be an exhibition at Miss Merriam's establishment that day, Musidora and her sister put on the old-fashioned, long, scooped bonnets, and wended their way to the school-room; where a roar of laughter from every one of the scholars greeted their elaborate bottle green head-gear;* and the proud daughters of Mr. Wyndham were so mortified and depressed all day, that they felt in no spirit to recite their lessons creditably before the examiners of the school.† Old Mrs. M'Elroy never gave these little girls a single cent (out of the purse their father left for them), to buy a doll, or a plaything of any description; indeed, they never had a moment to play after they came out of school, for the old utilitarian always had towels and sheets for them to hem, or some other work; and then, though she had a large yard, beautifully shaded with immense locust trees, she kept a malignant dog, who, like herself, was as fierce as a tiger, and the children never entered the premises without expecting to be torn to pieces. * Processions, cavalcades, and all that fund of gay frippery," says Goldsmith, “furnished out by tailors, barbers, and tire-women, mechanically influence the mind into veneration: an emperor in his night-cap would not meet with half the respect of an emperor with a crown." "Small miseries, like small debts, hit us in so many places, and meet us at so many turns and corners, that what they want in weight they make up in number; and render it less hazardous to stand the fire of one cannon-ball than a volley composed of such a shower of bullets." Sidney Smith, speaking of Utilitarians, says, "Yes, he is of the Utilitarian school. That man is so hard, you might drive a broad-wheeled wagon over him, and it would produce no impression; if you were to bore holes in him with a gimlet, I am convinced saw-dust would come out of him. That school treat mankind as if they were mere machines; the feelings or affec tions never enter into their calculations. If everything is to be sacrificed to utility, why do you bury your grandmother at all? Why don't you cut her into small pieces at once, and make port able soup of her?" Mr. Wyndham's friends often visited Savannah on business, and never failed to call on the little Musidora and her sister; and on leaving would slip two or three dollars in their hands, to buy a great wax doll apiece. The children had none of that concealment or cunning (which is always foreign to a noble nature), and so they invariably ran to Mrs. M'Elroy with their presents, and she as invariably assured them, "that it was wicked and foolish to buy dolls with their money;" and then advised them "to go to Mr. Fair's store, where they could get beautiful book-muslin for one dollar a yard, (which was the price of this article then), and put it up carefully till they grew to be young ladies, and then embroider collars, and sleeves, and tippets, out of it." "To-morrow didst thou say? Methought I heard Horatio say, to-morrow! Go to, I will not hear of it. To-morrow! 'Tis a sharper who stakes his penury Against thy plenty. Who takes thy ready cash, And pays thee nought but wishes, hopes, and promises, That gulls the easy creditor. To-morrow! It is a period nowhere to be found In all the hoary register of Time, Unless perchance in the fool's calendar. Wisdom disclaims the word, nor holds society With those that own it. No, my Horatio, 'Tis Fancy's child, and folly is its father; Wrought on such stuff as dreams are; and baseless When Musidora's school dresses got torn, or were worn out on the elbows, Mrs. M'Elroy would take down her scrap-bag, and without the least reference to simi larity of color or pattern, select a patch large enough for the hole, and make her sew it on; so that, as the gay new piece was prone to every beholder, the scholars used to ask her sneeringly, "Where she got Joseph's coat of many colors?" Mrs. M'Elroy determined that children's shoes should last a specified, orthodox time; and as Musidora was a very active, romping child, her shoes never held together as long as her sedate sister's; and she was, therefore, compelled to go to school with her little rebellious toes sticking out, to the derision of the motherly cared for little girls who attended Miss Merriam's school. During this whole season of penurious restriction to the proud little orphans, Mr. Wyndham's young wife was sending constant orders to Savannah, for the most costly garments for herself, and the richest thread laces, and embroidered cloaks, &c. &c. &c., for her own infant. One item of value for this incomparable papoos, was a chinchilla cap, that at that time cost some sixteen or twenty dollars. While Mr. Wyndham's daughters were crushed with mortification every day about their outlandish clothes, and unseemly bonnets and torn shoes (for who but a philosopher can bear to be the target of ridicule), their whole-souled, generous, loving father, was revelling in wealth, and congratulating himself that his dear little girls had so pleasant a home with his wife's pious, experienced parents, who would treat them with so much more forbearing affection, than if he had placed them at a stranger's boarding-school. No persons on earth make their household more miserable, than violent-tempered,* unsanctified puritans, like old Mr. and Mrs. M'Elroy, who expected everybody, except themselves, to keep to the letter, as well as the spirit, of the ten commandments. The children could not write, and indeed would not, under any circumstances, have been guilty of the folly, or mischief-making, consequent on complaining of their step-mother's parents, to their father. Oh, could their own noble, highly-educated, wise, and Christian mother, have been privileged by destiny to rear them herself, there is not the smallest doubt that they would have proved an honor to every society they moved in; for they inherited all their proud mother's self-respect, talent, enterprise, adhesiveness, and beautiful conscientiousness.† The very year that these orphans suffered so many privations and mortifications among their fashionably dressed schoolmates, their father, Mr. Wyndham, had made one hundred bales of the fine, long staple seaisland cotton, that forty years ago sold for seventy-five to ninety cents a pound. Each bale contained four hundred pounds; so that his income from this silky species of cotton alone, was perhaps thirty thousand dollars. But his most impracticable, teenish wife, *"Discord, a sleepless hag, who never dies, With snipe-like nose, and ferret-glowing eyes, Lean, sallow cheeks, long chin, with beard supplied, "As the soil, however rich it may be, cannot be productive without culture, so the mind, without cultivation, can never produce good fruit.” — SENECA. |