Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/36

 But we are lingering too long over these trivial incidents of our heroine's childhood, and we must ask the indulgence of our readers to skip over a period of a dozen years. A period, indeed, of much importance in the advancement of the little colony, which had, of course, gained much in numbers in that time, partly by natural increase, and still more by new and important arrivals. Much had, of course, been accomplished in a dozen years to improve the little settlement; the town was better organized and better governed; new streets had been laid out; new buildings, and of a better class, had been erected; new sources of industry opened; and a new impetus given to education, commerce, and agriculture.

But—as for the dramatis personæ of our story—Mrs. Campbell (Alice's grandmother) was little changed; she was still a hale, handsome, and resolute, though now an elderly woman. But she did not show her years, if she felt them; she had reached that stand-point in life where nature seems to pause and rest herself awhile; the growth and progress of her Spring had long passed