The wear of time, which is supposed to dim the eye, seemed to improve the ocular views of Joel Newschool amazingly, for he had been enabled in his late years to see that a vast difference of _caste_ existed between those that tilled the soil, wielded the sledge hammer, or drove the jack-plane, and those that were merely the idle spectators of such operations. He no longer groped in the darkness of men who believed in such fallacies as that wealth gave man no superiority over honest poverty! In short, Mr. Newschool had kept pace with all the fine notions and ostentatious feelings so peculiar to the mushroom aristocracy of the nineteenth century. He gloried in his pride, and yet felt little or none of that happiness that the bare-footed, merry cow boy enjoyed in the stubble field. But such is man. With all his comfortable appurtenances wealth could buy and station claim, the retired merchant was not a happy man. Though his expensive carriage and liveried driver were seen to roll him regularly to the majestic church upon the Sabbath: though he was a patient listener to the massive organ's spiritual strains and the surpliced minister's devout incantations: though he defrauded no man, defamed not his neighbor, was seeming virtuous and happy, there was at his heart a pang that turned to lees the essence of his life. Joel Newschool had seen his two sons and three daughters, men and women around him; they all married and left his roof for their own. One, a favorite child, a daughter, a fine, well-grown girl, upon whom the father's heart had set its fondest seal--she it was that the hand of Providence ordained to humble the proud heart of the sordid millionaire. Cecelia Newschool, actuated by the noblest impulses of nature, had for her husband sought "a _man_, not a money chest," and this circumstance had made Cecelia a severed member of the Newschool family, who could not, in the refined delicacy of their senses, tolerate such palpable condescension as to acknowledge a tie that bound _them_ to the wife of a poor artizan, whatever might be his talents or integrity as a man. Francis Fairway had made honorable appeal to the heart of Cecelia, and she repaid his pains with the full gift of a happy wife. She counted not his worldly prospects, but yielded all to his constancy. She wished for nothing but his love, and with that blessed beacon of life before her, she looked but with joy and hope to the bright side of the sunny future. The home of the artizan was a plain, but a happy one. Loving and beloved, Cecelia scarce felt the loss of her sumptuous home and ties of kindred. But not so the proud father and the patient mother, the haughty sisters and brothers; they felt all; they attempted to conceal all, that bitterness of soul, the canker that gnaws upon the heart when we will strive to stifle the better parts of our natures.