"I have great sympathy with the struggles of young people in this matter. I well remember how often I had to school myself (for you know that many of my associates in early life were of the wealthy classes), when I saw my companions gratifying every wish for amusement, instruction, and dress, while I could only just keep decent enough not to shock them, and had to give up all my longings for expensive amusements and accomplishments. But I had this great advantage, by mixing familiarly with the rich,--I soon discovered that neither goodness nor happiness were dependent upon these adventitious circumstances, and I was so fortunate in the characters of those whom I thus dealt with, as to be made to feel very early in life that my own position among them was not in the least degree affected by externals. I soon began to look upon my oft-turned dress with something like pride, certainly with great complacency; and to see in that, and all other marks of my mother's prudence and consistency, only so many proofs of her dignity and self-respect,--the dignity and self-respect which grew out of her just estimate of the true and the right in herself and in the world. I can distinctly remember coming to this conclusion upon the occasion of wearing an old-fashioned, stiff, purple silk dress, with a narrow plaited tucker in it, to a party at Colonel P----'s, about the year 1808; I have never had any trouble on that score since. I did shed some tears, when I found I must give up my long-cherished hope of learning music, some years after, but they were 'natural tears,' and 'wiped soon.' "But I have become garrulous, talking about my youth (as old people are apt to), and have wandered from the case in hand." * * * * *