"She recognized what her father did not,--the necessity of some preparation for freedom. The law against letters did not exist then, I believe; I remember them, the great and little, painted on boards and put up round a pretty arbor she called her school-house. I don't know whether her pupils ever mastered them or not; but what certainly did prosper was the class for singing, and that for recitation. I had not seen much of men and things then, and had not learned to distinguish the desirable and the practicable. Even I came under the illusion of the hour, and dreamed liberty, equality, and perfectibility with the best. Not that Constance talked about these fine things, but she had an innate faith in them of the sort that makes mole-hills of mountains. Even now, looking back on that diligent, confident child, I seem to feel the 'almost thou persuadest me.' Poor Constance! She died, at twenty-two, of overwork. She wore herself out in efforts to bring her poor barbarians up to the standard her imagination had set for them." Constance Harvey had a spirit strong enough to have sustained a slighter frame than hers through all the fatigues necessary to the attainment of a great end. She died, not of her work, but of its frustration. She had all power with her father, except to overcome his inertness. To this, as years went on, other hindrances were added. Her brother married a fashionable woman and lived in Paris. His demands forbade the increase of the reserved fund, and soon began to encroach upon it. She urged her brother's return. He replied, that the delicacy of his wife's health made the climate of France necessary to her. His expenses increased, instead of lessening. Constance saw, coming nearer and nearer, a danger far more terrible to her than mere pecuniary embarrassment. She saw that her father must either exercise a courage that she had little hope of, or break his faith with Jasper,--with the faithful people who had worked for them, or rather, as she viewed it, with them, for the accomplishment of a common object. One half of the fund she regarded as a deposit,--as a sacred trust. Until her brother's claims had exhausted the portion always intended to be his, she combated her anxieties, and kept up hope and effort. Through her genius and energy the income of the estate was increased, the expenses diminished, and yet the comforts of the work-people not curtailed. Jasper seconded her bravely. But the hour of dishonor came at last,--came hopeless, irretrievable. She struggled on a little while for her poor father's sake, and Jasper exerted himself strenuously for hers, stimulating the people to renewed industry by his warm appeals. Before, he had roused them with the hope of freedom and independent wealth; now, he urged them to rescue from ruin the generous master who had meant them so much good. But the demands from Paris increased as the means of supplying them diminished. Debt came, and in its train