Years past on, and we were a happy band of brothers and sisters. After
Kate, came the twins, Margaret and Herbert, and last of all came the
youngest darling, blue eyed Dora. We had a happy childhood. Our station
in the world was high enough to enable us to have all the harmless
pleasures and studies that were useful and actually necessary to boys
and girls of our station. Father always thought that it was better in
early youth not to force the boys to too hard study, and mother loved
best to see Kate and Margaret using the fingers in fabricating garments,
than in playing the harp. We were free, happy, roving children on
father's farm, unchained by the forms of fashionable life. We had no
costly dresses to spoil, and were permitted to play in the green fields
without a servant's eye, and to bathe in the clear shallow stream
without fear of drowning. As I have said before, these were happy days;
and when I think of them gone, I often express my regret that we did not
improve them more for the cultivation of the mind and the affections. In
the next story you will see that there were some passing clouds in our
early summer days.




MARGARET AND HERBERT.


In a large family there are often diversity of character and varieties
of mood and temper, which bring some clouds of sorrow. In our little
Eden of innocence there were storms now and then. Miles was a little
wild and headstrong from his babyhood, and Margaret, though very
beautiful, was often wilful and vain. For five years the twins had grown