best traditions, thus winning the heart of Annabel, who marries him clandestinely, just before he is arrested for murder. He is acquitted by the testimony of his supposed father, and an old Indian appears opportunely to confess that Ashton was really the son of Colonel Ainsworth, Annabel’s guardian. There was a particular vocabulary that belonged to this school of romance, and Mrs. Dumont employed it in all its copiousness. When rightly used it minimized the importance of invention; and it was better adapted to the portrayal of delicate and shrinking heroines and noble and handsome heroes, than to the rougher work of depicting action. A nice instinct was essential to its proper use, and no one of her generation wielded it with more grace and ease than Mrs. Dumont. Scott and Irving were the inspiration of the school in which she took so high a place; and the verse which it produced so abundantly showed frequently the influence of Mrs. Hemans. Mrs. Dumont’s technical skill was superior to that of her Western contemporaries; but it is idle and ungracious to criticise the writings of one whose talents were so varied, and whose life was consecrated to good works. Her name inevitably suggests that of another teacher, her kinswoman, Miss Catharine Merrill (1824-1900), who, with a wider field and larger opportunity, filled a similar place at Indianapolis for fifty years. She was born at Corydon, the old capital. Samuel Merrill, her father, was a cultivated man, a native of Vermont, and an early settler of Indianapolis. He subscribed to the English reviews and owned a large library, whose contents circulated freely among the pioneers. He had been educated at Dartmouth, and occasionally taught the higher branches, but he was a man of affairs, served the public in important offices, and was one of the ablest of the State’s early financiers. The daughter taught English literature in Butler College for eighteen years, and during this time, and subsequently as a teacher of private classes, inculcated in the minds of three generations a discriminating taste for literature. Miss Merrill wrote (1869) “The Soldier of Indiana,” a valuable record of the State’s participation in the war of the rebellion, which contains much biographical matter that is nowhere else collected. Mrs. Dumont and Miss Merrill afford delightful illustrations of the compelling force of personality. In a sense one succeeded the other, and, though they labored in different fields, throughout a century they impressed upon the youth of the commonwealth the nobility of character and the love of learning which they so happily combined in themselves.