him; and in teaching Edna to read and to write, and to cipher, he
never failed to impress upon her the vast superiority which a
thorough education confers. Whether his exhortations first kindled
her ambition, or whether her aspiration for knowledge was
spontaneous and irrepressible, he knew not; but she manifested very
early a fondness for study and thirst for learning which he
gratified to the fullest extent of his limited ability. The
blacksmith's library consisted of the family Bible, Pilgrim's
Progress, a copy of Irving's Sermons on Parables, Guy Mannering, a
few tracts, and two books which had belonged to an itinerant
minister who preached occasionally in the neighborhood, and who,
having died rather suddenly at Mr. Hunt's house, left the volumes in
his saddle-bags, which were never claimed by his family, residing in
a distant State. Those books were Plutarch's Lives and a worn school
copy of Anthon's Classical Dictionary; and to Edna they proved a
literary Ophir of inestimable value and exhaustless interest.
Plutarch especially was a Pisgah of letters, whence the vast domain
of learning, the Canaan of human wisdom, stretched alluringly before
her; and as often as she climbed this height, and viewed the
wondrous scene beyond, it seemed, indeed,

...... "an arch where through
Gleams that untraveled world, whose margin fades
Forever and forever when we move."

In after years she sometimes questioned if this mount of observation
was also that of temptation, to which ambition had led her spirit,
and there bargained for and bought her future. Love of nature, love
of books, an earnest piety and deep religious enthusiasm were the
characteristics of a noble young soul, left to stray through the