"Yet mourn not I! A stern high duty Now nerves my arm and fires my brain. Perish the dream of shapes of Beauty! And that this strife be not in vain To war on fraud intrenched with power, On smooth pretence and specious wrong, This task be mine tho' Fortune lower-- For this be banished sky and song." "How did it happen, mamma," inquired Marguerite, "that Uncle Barnes has not become a distinguished man? Is he not clever like Uncle Horace, or was he not fond of learning? It seems strange that he never left home to seek his fortune in the world." "Brother Barnes has quite as much genius," mamma quickly replied, "as your Uncle Horace, and under equally favoring circumstances would have made as brilliant a man. A farmer's life was distasteful to him, and it was for years his dream to go away from home, and receive an education that would fit him for the bar or the pulpit, towards both of which 'callings' he was strongly attracted. It would, however, have been impossible for father to have hewn a farm unaided out of the wilderness, and he could not afford to hire any assistance, so brother Barnes generously sacrificed all his own aspirations and preferences, and devoted his life, which might have been a brilliant and successful one, to the dull routine of farm acres." "Did Uncle Barnes resemble papa much, as a boy?" inquired Ida. "Your uncle was of a very different temperament," replied mamma; "he was as gay and loquacious as your papa was silent and abstracted. He was very fond of reading and of study, but he lacked your papa's perseverance; he was more awake to the outer world and its distractions, whereas brother Horace was oblivious to everything else, when he once held a book in his hand. "I have told you what a splendid voice your grandfather had. Brother Barnes was the only one of the five children who inherited it, and with it a very quick ear for music. I remember hearing mother say, that when he was three and four years old, he was often called upon to sing for our friends, who not unfrequently rewarded his talent with presents; however, at the time when his voice changed, it completely lost its musical qualities, to our great regret. "As he grew older, he developed a taste for argument, that would have done him good service had he been able to follow out his darling project of becoming a lawyer; indeed, as it was, he was always called upon, unprofessionally, to settle the neighbors' disputes, and was renowned for making all the love-matches of the neighborhood. In his reading he had rather a peculiar taste; he delighted in theological and controversial books, and I never knew any one who was more thoroughly acquainted with the Bible. He could not only give the precise chapter and verse from which any text was taken, but was able to detect the slightest verbal error in the quotation.