Abigal, or, as she was usually called, Abby Leyburn, was the only child of a learned and eccentric clergyman, who, being disappointed in his hope of exercising his theories of education on a son, chose to educate his daughter after the manner of a boy. Fortunately for him, the little girl possessed a singularly strong and quick mind. She grasped at knowledge as most children would at playthings, and imbibed wisdom with as much zest as others would have sucked an orange. Latin, Greek and Hebrew, mathematics, moral philosophy, to say nothing of the lighter accomplishments of botany, geology, and natural history, were _among_ the young lady’s acquirements. Her father had determined to make her a second Madame Dacier, and he really seemed likely to find her a sort of female _Crichton_. Nor were these all her acquisitions. The details of housekeeping, the thrift, management, and tidiness necessary to the comfort of American homes, was as easy as the alphabet to Abby. She could knit, and spin, and sew; she could bake, and brew, and cook; she could milk, and churn, and make cheese; and nobody could so effectually and rapidly “set things to rights.” Beside all this, Abby Leyburn, at twenty years of age, was one of the handsomest girls in the country. She was like nothing so much as the effigy of Britannia on an English penny. Don’t laugh, reader, the comparison is a highly complimentary one, but lest you should not recollect the stately Mrs. Bull, I will describe my heroine. Abby was just six feet high, but magnificently proportioned, a perfect Juno in form, with large black eyes, a high forehead, full red lips, and a chin as massive and as despotic in its expression as Napoleon’s. Her profile was superb—bold, strongly-marked, but beautifully classical. Her abundant hair, usually worn back from her brow, and gathered into a knot at the back of her head, was black as the crow’s wing. Her teeth were white, strong, and somewhat pointed in shape, a peculiarity which rather impaired the softness of her smile, inasmuch as it was always associated with the beholder’s remembrance of a somewhat similar conformation in the dental perfections of the only wild animal who has ever been accused of laughing—I mean the hyena. Not that Abby bore the slightest resemblance to the disagreeable creature just named. But her smile certainly lacked that indefinable charm which usually belongs to such pleasant demonstrations of good humor. As a specimen of the human animal Abby was perfect. The superb proportions of her well-rounded figure, her complexion, pure, fresh, and radiant with health, her firm step, quick, active motions, and great strength of frame, combined to make her a model of “_le grande et beau physique_.” Add to these personal attractions, her learning, and her domestic accomplishments, and one might almost fancy that Aunt Abby, in her younger days at least, came near being “That faultless monster which the world ne’er saw.”