Although born in the city—although the din of Broadway was the first noise that broke upon her infant slumbers—Amy was as much out of place in New York, with its reeking gutters, its eternal omnibuses and its “indignation processions,” as a pond lily would be in a tanner’s pit. The country, with its wealth of foliage, its fields and its wild flowers, was her delight. The anticipation of visiting it seemed to be alone sufficient to fill her heart with cheerfulness during the winter months. A little cottage, in Westchester county, to which the name of Glenwood had been given, and which had not been sacrificed in the general wreck of her father’s property, was her _beau ideal_ of Paradise. And a delicious spot it was—cool, sequestered, rich in its smooth lawns and ancient forests, and commanding a fine view of Long Island Sound, from which a fresh breeze was wafted in the hottest days of summer. I cannot imagine a more suitable place at which to introduce Amy to the friendly regards of my readers. But before I proceed, let me express my regret that a rigid adherence to truth and candor will not permit me to conceal the fact that there was one trait of character in which Amy was lamentably and unaccountably deficient. Notwithstanding the lessons and the example of her respectable aunt—notwithstanding the hereditary _blood_ in her veins—notwithstanding the family tree and the family pictures, Amy had not one particle of that praiseworthy and truly disinterested pride which springs from the contemplation of the superiority of some remote ancestor over ourselves. She had not sense enough to see (poor thing!) why the circumstance of her great grandfather’s having been a bishop was a sufficient proof of her own orthodoxy and worth, or what her grandmother’s merit had to do with _hers_. Had she been in the habit of quoting poetry, she might have adopted the base-spirited sentiment expressed by Pope: What can ennoble fools, or knaves, or cowards? A great fallacy, and one which never failed to excite the vehement and proper indignation of Aunt Adeline! I am sorry that at the very outset I am compelled to tell these things of Amy, but, as they illustrate her conduct on an important occasion, they could not well be omitted.