ted pleasure, she philosophically endeavored to substitute another, within her reach. A book, some pleasant employment, arranging pressed flowers in her herbarium, adding to her scrap-book, learning a song, sketching a new picture, invariably neutralized the spirit-dampening effects of the unwelcome rain. In short, she accommodated herself to circumstances with such skilful adaptation, made the best of the inevitable with such cheerful tact, that no passing event inconvenienced her, no chance disappointment disturbed her equanimity.
As she grew older, she astonished her parents by correctly executing difficult pieces of music, which had baffled her gifted brother's skill; and completing pictures he had commenced and thrown by in despair. She inherited, too, his faculty for versification, and though her effusions were always short, the music of the rythm, the concentration of thought, the choiceness of the language, and high finish of her verses, placed them far above his more ambitious, but less perfect, poetic flights. By and by, her parents were startled into the admission that Viola's talents were equal, if not superior, to those of her brother; and when her sunny, peaceful face was accidentally placed in contrast with Cynthia's fretful, clouded countenance, in spite of the rich coloring and classic symmetry of the latter, Viola's was pronounced the more beautiful.
"Ah!" exclaimed the mother, remorsefully,
