the beautiful Connecticut. A little company from the sea-side found
their way, through the tangled and pathless woods, to the meadows that
lay sleeping on the banks of this bright river; and here, after having
felled the mighty trees whose brows had long been kissed by the pure
heavens, they erected their humble cottages; and began to till the rich
alluvial soil. The colonists were persevering and industrious; and soon
a little village grew up beside the shining stream, fields of Indian
corn waved their wealth of tasselled heads in the breezes, the
rudely-constructed school-house echoed with the cheerful hum of the
little students, and a rustic church was dedicated to the God of the
Pilgrims. He who officiated as the spiritual teacher of this new parish,
also instructed the children during the week. A man he was of no
inferior mind, or neglected education; of fervent, but austere piety,
possessing a bold spirit and a benevolent heart. His family consisted of
a wife and two daughters; Emma, the elder, was a girl of eight summers,
and Anna, the younger, was about five.

Never were children so frolicsome and mirth-loving as were Emma and Anna
Wilson, the daughters of the minister. Not the grave admonitions of
their mother, or the severe reproofs of their stern father; not their
many confinements in dark and windowless closets, or the memory of
afternoons, when, supperless, they had been sent to bed while the sun
was yet high in the heavens; not the fear of certain punishment, or the
suasion of kindness, could tame their wild natures, or force them into
anything like woman-like sobriety. Hand in hand, they would wander amid
the aisles of mossy-trunked trees, plucking the flowers that carpeted
the earth; now digging for ground-nuts, now turning over the leaves for
acorns; sometimes they would watch the nibbling squirrel as he nimbly
sprang from tree to tree, or overpower, with their boisterous laughter,
the gushing melody of the bobolink; they mocked the querulous cat-bird