I hope, gentle reader, you do not think that Fanny was an insipid kind of person. Oh, if you could but know how much of beauty and loveliness there is in a nature wherein truth dwells constantly, you would covet to be like my Fanny. Yet, although she never read any thing but the Bible, or some good little pattern book, now and then,—although she only visited the poor and comfortless, and knew nothing of a theatre, yet her conversation was full of life; and, I might say, poetry. Her soul was in such harmony with all God’s works; and there was such melody in her accents, and such eloquence in her eye and her smile—such devotion to those she loved, that no one ever dreamed that she was an ignoramus. Mr. Floss, as I before observed, after the first surprise was over, doubted whether a woman more learned would have made him half so happy. He saw that other men did not care twopence for their wives’ sense or reading, after a month or so. Very few, he observed, talked out of book to their family, or seemed particularly pleased to hear that their wives were reading women. As to sights—no one ever thought of taking so refined and delicate a creature as Fanny to see them; particularly such as the Siamese twins, or fat children, or the wild beasts in their closely confined, stifled menageries. She certainly knew that there were wild beasts; for well she remembered how often she had cried over the story, in a little gilt covered book, of the boy who went too near the lion, and had his head struck off. But Fanny, as she grew up, was not allowed to suffer her mind to dwell on such things; her judicious mother said there was too much of real life business to occupy her without crying over little boys that had their heads chopped off by wild beasts; and, another thing, she did not believe a word of the story—“But, let that alone,” said she, “Fanny dear, ‘tis no concern of ours.” But, although Fanny’s thoughts and actions were full of piety, yet there was nothing mawkish, or canting, or tiresome, in her way of talking about it. She made even the poor themselves feel cheerful by her pleasant ways. It was not in her nature to exact any thing of them in return for what she did; nor did she pry into the little unhappy affairs which had contributed to bring them to poverty. It is only the callous heart that does this; only those who wish to make themselves conspicuous who ferret out the little miserable secrets of the poor.