only neglected the duties of a Christian father, but foregone the instincts of a brute parent, and, depriving his children of their birthright in a prosperous land, had reduced them to the privations and slavery of extreme poverty. Yet this weak man revolted from putting his child to domestic service as the severest trial of his condition!
This was doubtless an extreme case of Lee. But was not his feeling a part of a very general false estimate of life, its positions, its trials, and its duties?
CHAPTER III.
looking for a place.
Mrs. Lee having made up her mind that Lucy must go to service, tried to look upon the bright side of the necessity, and to present the brightest to her husband, but in her own secret heart she had bitter conflicts. She had, as we have said, no acquaintance in the city; she wanted not only a place for this pure, good little girl, who had never left the shelter of her mother's wing, but a good place, where the weaknesses of childhood would be considered; where its faults would be patiently borne with, forgiven, and corrected; where its ignorance would be instructed; where the employer would feel the responsibility, and the privilege, we may add, of training a young creature in virtue
