When Elbridge had been a few months in the valley
of the Juniata, he was called to administer spiritual
consolation to a woman dying of consumption.
A small lad, with a slight Irish brogue, and eyes
swollen with weeping, poorly but cleanly dressed, conducted
him two or three miles up the valley, to a house
built of logs, but as neat as a cottage ornee, and nested
in the most luxuriant shrubbery. Elbridge could
scarcely believe this to be the home of James Blair, the
wretched inebriate, whom he had often remarked
staggering from bar-room doors, or lying by the way-side
in a state of brutal intoxication.

When he entered, the dying woman was sitting upright
in bed, supported by a young girl, whom he had
before seen at his meetings, and noticed for the Ma

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donna-like sweetness and purity of her countenance.
This was Elizabeth Blair, the eldest daughter of the
house. Her sister, an exceedingly beautiful girl of
sixteen or seventeen, stood at her side, weeping passionately.
The husband and father, for once in his
right mind, was kneeling at the bed-side, his face
buried in his hands, and his whole frame quivering
with convulsive sobs. Opposite stood Dr. N—, a
young physician, late from Harrisburgh, already partially
known to Elbridge.

To his joy, the clergyman found that his ministrations
were only needed by the husband and children;
the wife and mother awaited with fearless and saintlike
serenity the swift coming of the angel of death.
In the brief conversation which he was enabled to
have with her, he saw that she was remarkably intelligent
for one of her station, and possessed of the clearest
and truest understanding of spiritual things.

At the close of a simple and fervent prayer, the sufferer
beckoned her younger children to draw nearer,
kissed them tenderly, and faintly murmured, “Elizabeth,
your mother—now.” Then, for the first time,
James Blair looked up, and, in a voice husky with remorseful
anguish, exclaimed, “Forgive me, Mary,
before you go!”

Alas! the power of speech had left the poor, wronged
wife, but she stretched out her thin hand, and laid it
tenderly on the head of her repentant husband, and
then let it glide down upon his neck. He understood
the action, and drew closer to her; she bent forward,
pressed her cold lips to his, and so died.

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On his return to his boarding-house, Elbridge, ascertained,
to his surprise, that the family with whom
he was domesticated were nearly related to the Blairs.
Philip Denny, his host, the only brother of the late
Mrs. Blair, was one of the wealthiest men in the valley;
but, though violently religious, had the reputation of
great penuriousness. He had but one child, a daughter,
and, as she is to be no unimportant character in
this “simple story,” it is time she was known to
my reader. So, my dear sir, or madame, allow me
to present to you Miss Katherine Denny, the
beauty and belle for many miles up and down the
valley of the Juniata. She was a superb creature—
a perfect Irish Juno—with the queenliest of forms,
the haughtiest of gaits, and the blackest eyes conceivable,
out of which flashed a fire, beautiful but
dangerous, like lightning from a midnight cloud.
Katherine had been for some while the leader and life
of gay society in that region, and had won for herself
the name of being an arch-coquette. But soon after
the advent of that rara avis, a minister, young, rich,
and handsome, she became, to the great dismay of
her worldly admirers, suddenly serious. She cut the
vain bows from her bonnet, and the equally vain beaux
at her side; she joined the “class” spiritual in the
conference room, and forsook the class Terpsichorean,
in the ball-room of “The Golden Horn.” She walked
demurely to meeting, and sung hymns, and talked
theology with the young minister, until his susceptible
heart was affected to the degree that he found himself
preaching with her commendations in view, and

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yet blushing and stammering painfully when he
marked her great black eyes fixed upon him in sermon-time.

She was thus “in the full tide of successful experiment,”
when, with the strange want of tact which the
most artful women often display when their hearts are
touched, she grew impatient of the slow-and-sure policy,
and, resolving to conclude her conquest by a
coup-de-main, she suddenly made her debut as an exhorter!

She proved herself possessed of rare talent, of absolute
genius as a speaker. She talked like an inspired
prophetess, and electrified her audience with her wonderful
bursts of eloquence. Her warnings and denunciations
were at times fearfully grand, and produced
the most striking effect upon her impressible hearers.
But, as for Elbridge, she had mistaken her man.
Though, as an orthodox methodist, he advocated women's
religious rights, and believed in the spiritual
equality of the sexes, his natural delicate sensitiveness,
and his early prejudices, were certainly opposed
to the unmaidenly course which Katherine Denny
was pursuing. He was pained, disappointed, ill at
ease every way, but did not presume to advise against
that which he believed the result of an imperious
sense of duty on the part of the beautiful religious enthusiast.
One Monday, while taking his morning
walk, musing on these things, and striving to reconcile
old tastes with newly formed-principles, he overheard
part of a conversation between two of his church-members,
who were at work in a field by the

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road-side. There had been a meeting of exciting interest
the night previous, and one of the men said to his
companion—

“Did you know that Tom Henderson had got
religion?”

“You don't say so! How?”

“Why, he happened in at the meeting last evening,
just for deviltry; but when Katherine Denny come
to free her mind, he grew dreadfully religious, and lay
in the power all night long.”

Now Tom Henderson was known through all
that region as the wildest, profanest jockey and frolicker;
and though good-natured and good-looking
withal the plague and pest of the honest and
peacefully-inclined. Here was, indeed, cause for rejoicing,
and Elbridge felt rebuked for his little faith,
and worldly fastidiousness. “Dear Katherine,” he soliloquized,
“why should I question your right to exercise
all your gifts in doing good! If your words have
carried conviction to the heart of this one sinner, great
is your reward for the sacrifice of your womanly delicacy.
But poor Henderson may be standing in want
of spiritual consolation: I will go to him.”

On reaching the abode of the Hendersons, the clerical
visiter was directed by a staring, red-haired girl,
to a back yard, where he found the young convert
seeking “consolation” in a cock-fight.

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