“I have so longed to learn. I have tried to study grammar alone, but it is very difficult to get on. I fear you will find me so ignorant that you will give up in despair. I know so little of books; but I can read, and write too, but I am a dreadful poor speller though. Dan used to laugh at me so.” “Did he? Why he was a perfect blockhead himself in school, and forever at the foot of the spelling class.” “Why, Miss Forest! I thought he was a beautiful writer and speller,” said Susie, wondering if this could be so. “Have you any of his letters?” asked Clara, laughing and thinking it would be a good stroke of policy to show Susie that her tyrant was not quite omnipotent in wisdom. Susie produced from the bottom of a well-worn paper box, whose corners, both of box and cover, had been carefully sewed together, a package of letters, and handed it confidently to Clara, who took out one at random, which was written while Dan was in the peddling business. It ran thus: “MY DARLING SUSIE: I have gone all over this one horse town of Boilston to-day, and have sold a peice of red coton velvit for a safer covering and some pins and matches and that is all. To-morrow I shall be in Marlboro and expect to do a big business. I have not written to the governer yet because I want to show him I can live and succede to, away from home, so dont tell whear I am til I come back whitch will be next weak. Thear is a pretty little house here for sail and I mean to buy it as soon as I get money enough. How would you like it as a present? Only I shall expect you to take me as a purmanent border and I may be a very dyspeptic one and hard to pleas.” There was much more about the cottage, and many expressions of tenderness and anxiety because he thought Susie did not fully return his love. Clara sighed as she refolded the letter, to think that one of her sex should be so deficient in culture as to take this effusion as a masterpiece of composition; but it revealed the fact that Dan had loved Susie sincerely in his way, and made her look very leniently upon Susie’s inordinate faith in him. “Are there any mistakes in that?” asked Susie, seeing that Clara was silent. “Yes, dear; plenty of them,” she answered, regretting her determination to destroy any of the poor child’s illusions; but she had committed herself to it, and so she pointed out the errors consecutively, beginning with “peice” in the first line, and then she said, “You see, if he had any serious education himself, he would not laugh at your mistakes in spelling. Only ignoramuses are vain about small accomplishments. I do not doubt in the least that your own letters were superior to this.”