that gentleness was the ruling trait of her character. Deacon Lee was one of that much-scandalized class, the Congregationalist deacons of New England, who have so often been described with a pen dipped in gall, if we may judge from the bitterness of the sketches. Scribblers delight in portraying them as rum-selling hypocrites, sly topers, lovers of gain, and fomenters of dissension, and so far has this been carried, that no tale of Yankee cunning or petty fraud is complete unless the hero is a deacon. It is true there are far too many such instances in real life, where eminence in the church is their only high standing, and the name of religion is but a cloak for selfish vices, but it is equally true that among this class of men are the good, the true, and kind, of the earth, whose lives are ruled by the same pure principles which they profess. Such was Deacon Lee, and it were well if there were more like him, to remove the stain which others of an opposite character have brought upon the office. He was one of those whom sorrow purifies, and had bowed in humble resignation to heavy afflictions. Of a large family only one son had lived to attain the years of manhood. The mother of Clara had been very dear to him, and he felt that her orphan child would supply, in a measure, the place of his own lost ones. His wife was his opposite, and theirs was one of those unaccountable unions where there is apparently no bond of sympathy. Stern and exact in the performance of every duty, she wished to enforce the same rigid observance upon others. The loss of her children had roused in her a zeal for religion, which, in one of a warmer temperament, would have been fanaticism. While her husband was a worshiper from a love of God and his holy laws, she was prompted by fears of the wrath to come. He bowed in thankfulness, even while he wept their loss, to the Power that had borne his little ones to a brighter world, while her life gained new austerity from the thought that they had been taken from her as a judgment on her worldliness and idolatry. She loved to dwell upon the sufferings of the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, and emulate their rigid lives, forgetting that it was the dark persecution of the times in which they lived that left this impress upon their characters. Her husband loved to commend the good deeds of their neighbors, while she was equally fond of censuring transgressors. Perhaps the result of their efforts was better than it would have been had both possessed the disposition of either one of them. Her firmness and energy atoned for the negligence resulting from his easy temper, and his sunny smile and kind words softened the asperity with which she would have ruled her household. Their son was engaged in mercantile business in a neighboring city, and their home would have been desolate but for the presence of little Clara. She was the sunshine of the old man's heart, and he forgot toil and weariness