"My mother wishes me to thank you myself, for your last act of goodness to us--but I can never tell you all we feel on the subject. My dear mother cried with joy all the evening, after she had received your letter. I am going to school according to your wish, as soon as mother can spare me, and I shall study very hard, which will be the best way of thanking you. The music-master says he has no doubt but I can play well enough to give lessons, if I go on as well as I have in the last year; I practise regularly every day. Mother bids me say, that now she feels sure of my education for the next three years, one of her heaviest cares has been taken away: she says too, that although many friends in the parish have been very good to us, since my dear father was taken away from us, yet 'no act of kindness has been so important to us, none so cheering to the heart of the widow and the fatherless, as your generous goodness to her eldest child;' these are her own words. Mother will write to you herself to-morrow. I thank you again, dear Miss Wyllys, for myself, and I remain, very respectfully and very gratefully, "Your obliged servant and friend, "MARY SMITH." This last letter seemed to restore all Elinor's good humour, acting as an antidote to the three which had preceded it. The correspondence which we have taken the liberty of reading, will testify more clearly than any assurance of ours, to the fact that our friend Elinor now stands invested with the dignity of an heiress, accompanied by the dangers, pleasures, and annoyances, usually surrounding an unmarried woman, possessing the reputation of a fortune. Wherever Elinor now appeared, the name of a fortune procured her attention; the plain face which some years before had caused her to be neglected where she was not intimately known, was no longer an obstacle to the gallantry of the very class who had shunned her before. Indeed, the want of beauty, which might have been called her misfortune, was now the very ground on which several of her suitors founded their hopes of success; as she was pronounced so very plain, the dandies thought it impossible she could resist the charm of their own personal advantages. Elinor had, in short, her full share of those persecutions which are sure to befall all heiresses. The peculiar evils of such a position affect young women very differently, according to their various dispositions. Had Elinor been weak and vain, she would have fallen into the hands of a fortune-hunter. Had she been of a gloomy temper, disgust at the coarse plots and manoeuvres, so easily unravelled by a clear-sighted person, might have made her a prey to suspicion, and all but misanthropic. Had she been vulgar-minded, she would have been purse-proud; if cold-hearted, she would have become only the more selfish. Vanity would have made her ridiculously ostentatious and conceited; a jealous temper would have become self-willed and domineering.