Leonard was not more than eight-and-twenty when he
obtained a living, a few miles from Doncaster. He took
his bride with him to the vicarage. The house was as humble
as the benefice, which was worth less than £ 50 a year;
but it was soon made the neatest cottage in the country
round, and upon a happier dwelling the sun never shone.
A few acres of good glebe were attached to it; and the garden
was large enough to afford healthful and pleasurable
employment to its owners. The course of true love never
ran more smoothly; but its course was short.

Little more than five years from the time of their marriage
had elapsed, before a head-stone in the adjacent
churchyard told where the remains of Margaret Bacon had
been deposited, in the thirtieth year of her age.

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When the stupor and the agony of that bereavement had
passed away, the very intensity of Leonard's affection became
a source of consolation. Margaret had been to him a
purely ideal object during the years of his youth; death
had again rendered her such. Imagination had beautified
and idolized her then; faith sanctified and glorified her now.
She had been to him on earth all that he had fancied, all
that he had hoped, all that he had desired. She would
again be so in heaven. And this second union nothing
could impede, nothing could interrupt, nothing could dissolve.
He had only to keep himself worthy of it by cherishing
her memory, hallowing his heart to it while he performed
a parent's duty to their child; and so doing to await
his own summons, which must one day come, which every
day was brought nearer, and which any day might bring.

The same feeling which from his chidhood had refined
Leonard's heart, keeping it pure and undefiled, had also
corroborated the natural strength of his character, and made
him firm of purpose. It was a saying of Bishop Andrewes,
that “good husbandry is good divinity”; “the truth whereof,”
says Fuller, “no wise man will deny.” Frugality he
had always practised as a needful virtue, and found that, in
an especial manner, it brings with it its own reward. He
now resolved upon scrupulously setting apart a fourth of his
small income to make a provision for his child, in case of
her surviving him, as in the natural course of things might
be expected. If she should be removed before him — for
this was an event the possibility of which he always bore in
mind — he had resolved, that whatever should have been
accumulated with this intent, should be disposed of to some

[figure description] Page 185.[end figure description]

other pious purpose, — for such, within the limits to which
his poor means extended, he properly considered this.
And having entered on this prudential course with a calm
reliance upon Providence, in case his hour should come before
that purpose could be accomplished, he was without
any earthly hope or fear, — those alone excepted from
which no parent can be free.

The child had been christened Deborah, after her maternal
grandmother, for whom Leonard ever gratefully retained a
most affectionate and reverential remembrance. She was
a healthy, happy creature in body and in mind; at first


one of those little prating girls
Of whom fond parents tell such tedious stories;*
afterwards, as she grew up, a favorite with the village
schoolmistress, and with the whole parish; docile, good-natured,
lively and yet considerate, always gay as a lark and
busy as a bee. One of the pensive pleasures in which
Leonard indulged was to gaze on her unperceived, and
trace the likeness to her mother.

That resemblance which was strong in childhood lessened
as the child grew up; for Margaret's countenance had acquired
a cast of meek melancholy during those years in
which the bread of bitterness had been her portion; and,
when hope came to her, it was that “hope deferred,” which
takes from the cheek its bloom, even when the heart, instead
of being made sick, is sustained by it. But no unhappy
circumstances depressed the constitutional buoyancy of her
daughter's spirits. Deborah brought into the world the

[figure description] Page 186.[end figure description]

happiest of all nature's endowments, an easy temper and a
light heart. Resemblant therefore as the features were,
the dissimiltude of expression was more apparent; and
when Leonard contrasted in thought the sunshine of hilarity
that lit up his daughter's face, with the sort of moonlight
loveliness which had given a serene and saint-like character
to her mother's, he wished to persuade himself, that as the
early translation of the one seemed to have been thus prefigured,
the other might be destined to live for the happiness
of others till a good old age, while length of years in
their course should ripen her for heaven.