had given up the school, and even when he was nominal teacher the children received very little of his time or attention, so that Helen found Mrs. Wendell and Keefe had not exaggerated the difficulties to be encountered. The scholars were totally undisciplined, almost incapable of mental exertion, coarse and rude in manners and language, dull and stupid at learning, though keen and quick enough in the common routine of their lives; in short, just such children as the poverty, ignorance, and low morality amidst which they lived might be expected to produce. Some of them were the children of parents who (as they phrased it) professed religion, who had sat under the preachings of pious brothers and elders, had gone through the agonies of the “New Birth,” and standing up during protracted meetings,” had confessed their sins, related their experiences, and offered themselves to God; but the children of these regenerate Christians, though they had heard the names of God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, and felt a strange mingling of awe and slavish fear when the subject of religion was mentioned, had no clearer ideas on the subject of practical morality or social duties, no higher principles of action than their companions, and Helen afterwards discovered that their parents were not at all superior in conduct to their unconverted neighbours.
Conversion, she found, does not always mean reformation of life, nor does a profession of religion necessarily include purity of character. She soon, however, perceived the germs of much that was good in these wild denizens of the backwoods; they were almost all kind-hearted, honest, and obliging; many of them diligent and anxious to learn, so that, after the first few days of labour and anxiety were over, she began to look forward to the gradual establishment of order, industry, and a spirit of improvement, with some degree of hope and satisfaction. The school-house stood at the back of the village on the edge of a narrow ravine, and about fifty yards farther up the hollow stood the log-house in which Helen now resided. The sides of this hollow, sometimes sloping gradually, sometimes steep and broken, were clothed by a second growth of pine and birch, and through its bottom ran a swift little stream as clear as crystal. At one end of the log-house was a patch of garden ground in which grew a few gooseberries and currant bushes, some plants of rhubarb, and a few vegetables; and in a small space railed in in front a few hollyhocks, sunflowers, and bright-coloured poppies flaunted gaily over bushes of southernwood, sweetbriars, and rosemary, and beds of thyme, rue, mint, sage, and all the pot-herbs to be found in the land. Scarlet-runners and morning glories were trained round this little stoup, and all these fruit-trees, flowers, and vegetables were cultivated with the greatest care and neatness. This log-house consisted of two bedrooms and another apartment in which the family cooked and ate their meals. It was scrupulously clean and neat: the floors spotless, and the whitewashed wall stainless as new-fallen snow. In one corner of the kitchen was a large dresser of stained deal; the tables and a chest of drawers were of the same material; the chairs were gaudily painted, and a spinning-wheel and cooking-stove were also in the room. On the top of the dresser lay a large Bible, a few religious tracts and books, and a splendidly-flowered tea-tray; and on the walls hung two or three framed engravings, supposed to represent scenes from the life of Christ. Mrs. Prior and her daughter had known much sorrow, having lost all their near relatives, and been reduced from comfort and independence to hardships and want, nearly at the same time. They now supported themselves by spinning, knitting, and needlework, by the sale of vegetables and fruit from their little garden, and by the produce of their cow, which, during the summer months, found a living in the woods, and in winter was kept without charge by Keefe Dillon. Grief had made this lonely pair an easy prey to the delusions of fanatical Methodism, and gave a gloomy austerity to their countenances and manners. They were so much alike, and so little difference of age appeared between them, that they looked more like sisters than mother and daughter. They had once been handsome, but were now thin and sharp-featured, with tall, upright, bony figures; they always dressed exactly alike, were black dresses made in a prim, scanty, antiquated fashion, and their hair—once raven black, now sprinkled with grey—was folded under their quaint muslin caps in close bands, beneath which their large, joyless, black eyes looked forth with a stern compassion on the cold world. Almost the first words they addressed to Helen were in the jargon of the sect, which they called the language of Canaan, but soon finding that she had no title, which they acknowledged, to fellowship with the saints, and that she stood in Egyptian darkness without the pale of the elect, they guarded themselves against contamination, by treating her with formal reserve, and contented themselves with showing a sense of her lost state by offering up prayers for her conversion, some of which she could not help hearing through the thin partition which divided her chamber from theirs.
Still, though ignorant and superstitious, they were honest and sincere, and Helen soon saw enough that was good in their characters to atone for their fanatical absurdities. Ere long too, their hearts, frozen as they were, thawed towards the beautiful and friendless stranger, whose grace and refinement they in some degree appreciated, and whose manners were yet so gentle, simple, and unaffected, and a kind tone of voice and more genial expression of face when they addressed her, marked the change.
The third evening after her school had been opened—when her day’s task was over—Helen paid a visit to the shanty in which Con Doyle, his mother, and some younger brothers and sisters lived.
Owing to Keefe’s kindness this shanty was more comfortable than such dwellings often are, the roof being whole and waterproof, the chinks well stopped and plastered, and it possessed a good earthen chimney and a boarded floor. But there were evident traces of the dirt and untidiness which extreme destitution never fails to produce; every thing it contained was in the greatest disorder,