although some of the neighbors, whose pretensions were far beyond their possessions, shook their heads and said that the young man might have done better.
Nevertheless, the son did very well indeed. He did a great deal better than some of those who criticised his choice, for he got a wife who knew how to put her shoulder to the wheel when there was any necessity for it, and how to economize when her husband's purse was pinched. The son, having married the woman of his choice, built him a home within a stone's throw of his mother's, and during her life not a day passed but he spent a part of it in her company. He had always been fond of his mother, and as he grew older, his filial devotion was fortified and strengthened by the profound impression which her character made on him. It was a character that had been moulded on heroic lines. As a child, she had imbibed the spirit of the Revolution, and everything she said and did was flavored with the energy and independence that gave our colonial society its special and most beautiful significance,—the significance of candor and simplicity.
Something of his mistress's energy and in-
