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 consideration of her husband's larger intelligence.

Under these favoring conditions Harriet grew to be a tall, self-possessed maiden; and as the handsomest and cleverest young woman of his acquaintance, was early wooed and won by the handsome and clever young business man James Spencer.

Indeed prosperity had marked her for its own from her very cradle. For while she was still in undisputed possession of that infant refuge, her mother's bachelor brother, William Kingsbury, had died, leaving to his little niece a legacy of two thousand dollars. This befell in the good old times when two thousand dollars was a tidy sum, and when money, being properly invested, doubled itself faster than is the case to-day. As their family increased in numbers a trifle faster than the family income grew, Anson Pratt and his wife would often remind one another that "Harriet was well provided for." The Pratts were plain, unworldly people, not at all inclined to pay undue deference to riches; yet one is tempted to wonder whether, if the little Harriet's future had been less assured, she might not sometimes have been called Hattie. The fact of never having known the levelling influences of a nickname is in itself not without weight in the sum of one's personal dignity.

During the many prosperous years that had elapsed since she had become Mrs. James Spencer,