Page:Women worth emulating (1877) Internet Archive.djvu/76

60 dwelling may be said to have let in light, by which we plainly see a most interesting family circle.

The eldest daughter, Elizabeth, was sixteen years of age—just able to enjoy and estimate the elegancies and comforts that were lost. The blow fell suddenly—for, in such crises, failures are often the result of the difficulties of others, and become beyond individual control—and the family at Piercefield were looking forward, not unreasonably, to building a new house, and to years of prosperity and domestic happiness.

Fortunately, Mrs. Smith, the mother in that home, was a woman of great good sense as well as refinement. She had not been domesticated in one residence for any long period of her married life. She resided at Bumhall, the seat of her ancestors, near Durham, when Elizabeth, her eldest daughter, was born, in 1776. Thence the family removed to Suffolk for a time, and afterwards lived at Piercefield, or Bath. Mrs. Smith was her children's first instructress, and was equally surprised and delighted both at the quickness and attention of little Elizabeth. She was a docile, rather shy child, very lovely in person, and gentle in temper.

A young lady. Miss Hunt, an orphan, only some seventeen years of age, was taken by Mrs. Smith as a governess to her little family, and from her Elizabeth received all the regular instruction that was ever bestowed on her. The young governess was kind and good, and tolerably clever; but her