"This meeting must be highly pleasing to you, miss," said Theodore to Alida, "after your long absence from home." "It is so, indeed," replied she, "and highly gratifying to my father, to meet here his children, and relations, on the annual occasion of celebrating his birth-day, when we are honoured with so numerous a company of uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, and nieces, that one would suppose we were connected with half the families in the state. And sometimes they do not all leave us, in several weeks afterwards, and regale themselves in riding about the country and visiting the neighbours in the vicinity." In the course of the evening they were joined by a number from the neighbouring villages, and among the rest was the son of a gentleman who had been long acquainted with the family. He was a gay young man; his address was easy; his manners rather voluptuous than refined; confident, but not ungraceful. He led the ton in fashionable circles, and was quite a favourite with the ladies generally. His name was Bonville. He had seen Alida long before, but her additional graces since that time appeared far to exceed his expectations. Alida at sixteen displayed many pleasing attractions. Her height rose to the majestic. She was tall and graceful, and her expressive features were adorned with hair of light auburn, which hung about her neck in natural ringlets; while her dark blue eyes, mingled at once the rays of sprightly intelligence, and a pleasing affability. She was arrayed on this occasion, in a dress of white muslin, richly inwrought with needle-work. A silk embroidered sash surrounded her waist, and she wore on her head a wreath of artificial flowers. Her elder sisters manifested their pleasure in beholding the artless, unadorned school-girl, metamorphosed to the interesting young lady of fascinating manners and amiable deportment. Social converse and rural amusements took up the greater part of the evening, when the general conversation of the gentlemen turned upon a topic in which they were all more or less interested, on what might be the unhappy result of the present contest, in which the American nation was engaged, which continued to engross their thoughts, and it was a late hour when the company separated. Those who remained behind accompanied Alida on the next Sabbath to the village church, where they heard an able and sublime discourse delivered by the parish minister; highly edifying to the understanding and improving to the minds of the hearers. This divine was fully competent in the possession of Christian principles and knowledge for his arduous calling, and had a happy talent of conveying them to others with effect, and communicating them in persuasive eloquence, for the benefit and reformation of mankind.