habitual taciturnity, soon occasioned Mr. Elford to consider her with
compassion: and the very question--can I not afford her relief? gave
birth to ideas of a still more tender nature.

These were seconded by a retrospect to his own situation. He had lost
a beloved wife, who had left him an infant daughter, in whose future
felicity he was strongly interested. He had often considered the
subject of education, and had become the determined enemy of
boarding-schools, where every thing is taught and nothing understood;
where airs, graces, mouth primming, shoulder-setting and elbow-holding
are studied, and affectation, formality, hypocrisy, and pride are
acquired; and where children the most promising are presently
transformed into vain, pert misses, who imagine that to perk up their
heads, turn out their toes, and exhibit the ostentatious opulence
of their relations, in a tawdry ball night dress, is the summit of
perfection.

Determined that his child should be sent to no such academy, he
considered a second marriage as necessary. Though an excellent
economist, he was utterly a stranger to avarice. My aunt was neither
rich, nor handsome, nor young; being, according to the rector's
account, on the debtor side of his books, of an adust complection,
atrabilarious in look and temper, thirty-four, and two years older
than Mr. Elford. But he imagined he could make her happy; or at least
could relieve her from a state little less than miserable. He likewise
supposed that she was well fitted to promote plans which he held to be
wise. Errors in moral calculations frequently escape undetected, even
by the most accurate.

But, as he was very sincere and honest in his intentions, he