And to those who hold the belief in “predestinate missions,” Mrs. Woodley’s taste for watching over the trivialities of existence proved that she was born “to look after candle-ends and cheese-parings.” As soon as they had collected what they considered a competent fortune they had retired to a country town, where the attractions of a new brick-house, planted in the midst of a broad and treeless meadow, proved irresistible to the utilitarian tastes of both, especially as it could be purchased at a low price. In this new home the good couple had ample opportunity to gratify their peculiar tastes. Mr. Woodley raised his own vegetables, and occasionally was not above selling any surplus produce of his land to a neighbor, while his wife succeeded in making her house the very pattern of cold formal neatness, merely at the expense of hospitality, good-humor, cheerfulness, and everything like rational or intellectual occupation. She scrubbed, and scoured, and scolded, until she drove her single servant to desperation, when a new one was found to go through the same ordeal for awhile. She saw no company, because it was expensive and troublesome—she went no where because she was too busy at home—she enjoyed nothing, not even her own neatness, because there was always some mote in the sunbeam, or some grain of dust in the air which either had, or would, or might fall somewhere in the midst of her cleanliness. One only feeling seemed to have lived and thrived in the stiff hard soil of these people’s hearts, and this was their love for their only son. It is true it had required the death of eight other children to concentrate and condense parental affection into any thing like a sentiment upon the remaining one, but all there was of love in their natures was unreservedly bestowed upon Hubert. To such parents and in such a home Hubert might well seem like a human sunbeam. He was one of those light-hearted, merry-tempered, affectionate boys, who are always such loveable creatures in early youth, and whose characters are in after life entirely formed by the mould and pressure of circumstances. The only strong quality in his whole nature was ambition, but this ambition was without fixed aim or purpose. To go beyond his companions in whatever they chose to undertake was his usual object, but he never struck out a path for himself. His earliest friends had become students, and therefore Hubert was a student with them; his versatility and quickness of mind enabling him to keep pace with plodding industry, and sometimes even to emulate genius. He was tall, well-made, and handsome, but a physiognomist might have detected infirmity of purpose in his flexible, loosely-cut lips, and phrenology would have turned in despair from a head which exhibited such a deplorable want of balance. But at eighteen Hubert was handsome enough to satisfy a mother’s pride, and warm-hearted enough to be agreeable to every one.