Harriet Aspin was the youngest of four sisters, who in their childhood had all a prospect of passing through life with every advantage that beauty and fortune can bestow. But destiny ordained it otherwise. The extravagance of their father abridged the portion of each, and the little Harriet had the additional affliction of personal calamities. From a fall which her nurse occasioned, and concealed, she contracted a great degree of deformity; and the injuries that her frame had received from accident, were completed in what her countenance suffered from that cruel distemper, by which beauty was so frequently destroyed, before the happy introduction of innoculation. Her countenance and person were wretchedly disfigured; but her mind still possessed the most valuable of mental powers, and her heart was embellished by every generous affection. Her friends were many: but she had passed her fortieth year without once hearing the addresses of a single lover; yet the fancied whisper of this enchanting passion often vibrated in her ear; for, with a solid and brilliant understanding, she was deeply tinctured with this credulous foible. As she advanced towards fifty, finding her income very narrow, and her situation unpleasant, she took shelter in the family of her favourite sister, married to a good-natured man of easy fortune, who, though he had several children, very readily allowed his wife to afford an asylum, and administer all the comforts in her power to this unfortunate relation. The good deeds of benevolence rarely pass unrewarded. The obliging temper of Harriet, united to infinite wit and vivacity, contributed to restore the declining health of her sister, and enlivened the house, into which she was so kindly admitted. She endeared herself to every branch of it; but her second nephew, whose name is Edward, became her principal favourite, and returned her partiality with more esteem and affection than nephews are used to feel for an old maiden aunt. Indeed, there was a striking similarity in their characters, for they both possessed a very uncommon portion of wit, with extreme generosity and good-nature. Harriet had the most perfect penetration into the foibles of every character but her own, and had the art of treating them with such tender and salutary mirth, that she preserved her nephew from a thousand follies, into which the giddiness of his passions would otherwise have betrayed him; and, when he was really fallen into some juvenile scrape, she never failed to assist him, both with secret advice, and the private aid of such little sums of money as she always contrived to save from her slender income, for the most generous of purposes.