Page:Female Prose Writers of America.djvu/88

 ,&mdash;for so noted a character must not want a name,&mdash;may well be pronounced a favourite of nature and of fortune. To the first she owed a pleasing person and a mind which offered no unapt soil for cultivation; by favour of the last, she was born the heiress to wealth and to those advantages which wealth unquestionably confers. Her childhood was carefully sequestered from all vulgar influences, and she was early taught, that to be a little lady was her highest possible attainment. At six years old she astonished the élite assembled in her father’s halls, and even dazzled the larger assemblages of Saratoga by her grace in dancing and by the ease with which she conversed in French, which, as it was the language of her nursery attendants, had been a second mother-tongue to her. At the fashionable boarding-school, at which her education was, in common parlance, completed, she distanced all competitors for the prizes in modern languages, dancing, and music; and acquired so much acquaintance with geography and history as would secure her from mistaking Prussia for Persia, or imagining that Lord Wellington had conquered Julius Cæsar&mdash;in other words, so much knowledge of them as would guard her from betraying her ignorance. To these acquirements she added a slight smattering of various natural sciences. All these accomplishments had nearly been lost to the world, by her forming an attachment for one of fine qualities, personal and mental, who was entirely destitute of fortune. From the fatal mistake of yielding to such an attachment she was preserved by a judicious mother, who placed before her in vivid contrast the commanding position in which she would be placed as the wife of Mr. A&mdash;, with his houses and lands, his bank stock and magnificent equipage; and the médiocre station she would occupy as Mrs. B&mdash;, a station to which one of her aspiring mind could not readily succumb, even though she found herself there in company with one of the most interesting and agreeable of men. Relinquishing with a sigh the gratification of the last sentiment that bound her to nature and to rational life, she magnanimously sacrificed her inclinations to her sense of duty, and became Mrs. A&mdash;. From this time her course has been undisturbed by one faltering feeling, one wavering thought. She has visited London