St. Elmo | Page 8

of praise on that bloody June day. In her morning visit
to the spring, she had stumbled upon a monster which custom had
adopted and petted--which the passions and sin fulness of men had
adroitly draped and fondled, and called Honorable Satisfaction; but her
pure, unperverted, Ithuriel nature pierced the conventional mask,
recognized the loathsome lineaments of crime, and recoiled in horror
and amazement, wondering at the wickedness of her race and the
forbearance of outraged Jehovah. Innocent childhood had for the first

time stood face to face with Sin and Death, and could not forget the
vision.
Edna Earl had lost both her parents before she was old enough to
remember either. Her mother was the only daughter of Aaron Hunt, the
village blacksmith, and her father, who was an intelligent, promising
young carpenter, accidentally fell from the roof of the house which he
was shingling, and died from the injuries sustained. Thus Mr. Hunt,
who had been a widower for nearly ten years, found himself burdened
with the care of an infant only six months old. His daughter had never
left him, and after her death the loneliness of the house oppressed him
painfully, and for the sake of his grandchild he resolved to marry again.
The middle-aged widow whom he selected was a kind-hearted and
generous woman, but indolent, ignorant, and exceedingly
high-tempered; and while she really loved the little orphan committed
to her care, she contrived to alienate her affection, and to tighten the
bonds of union between her husband and the child. Possessing a
remarkably amiable and equable disposition, Edna rarely vexed Mrs.
Hunt, who gradually left her more and more to the indulgence of her
own views and caprices, and contented herself with exacting a certain
amount of daily work, after the accomplishment of which she allowed
her to amuse herself as childish whims dictated. There chanced to be no
children of her own age in the neighborhood, consequently she grew up
without companionship, save that furnished by her grandfather, who
was dotingly fond of her, and would have utterly spoiled her, had not
her temperament fortunately been one not easily injured by
unrestrained liberty of action. Before she was able to walk, he would
take her to the forge, and keep her for hours on a sheepskin in one
corner, whence she watched, with infantile delight, the blast of the
furnace, and the shower of sparks that fell from the anvil, and where
she often slept, lulled by the monotonous chorus of trip and sledge. As
she grew older, the mystery of bellows and slack-tub engaged her
attention, and at one end of the shop, on a pile of shavings, she
collected a mass of curiously shaped bits of iron and steel, and blocks
of wood, from which a miniature shop threatened to rise in rivalry; and
finally, when strong enough to grasp the handles of the bellows, her
greatest pleasure consisted in rendering the feeble assistance which her

grandfather was always so proud to accept at her hands. Although
ignorant and uncultivated, Mr. Hunt was a man of warm, tender
feelings, and rare nobility of soul. He regretted the absence of early
advantages which poverty had denied him; and in teaching Edna to read
and to write, and to cipher, he never failed to impress upon her the vast
superiority which a thorough education confers. Whether his
exhortations first kindled her ambition, or whether her aspiration for
knowledge was spontaneous and irrepressible, he knew not; but she
manifested very early a fondness for study and thirst for learning which
he gratified to the fullest extent of his limited ability. The blacksmith's
library consisted of the family Bible, Pilgrim's Progress, a copy of
Irving's Sermons on Parables, Guy Mannering, a few tracts, and two
books which had belonged to an itinerant minister who preached
occasionally in the neighborhood, and who, having died rather
suddenly at Mr. Hunt's house, left the volumes in his saddle-bags,
which were never claimed by his family, residing in a distant State.
Those books were Plutarch's Lives and a worn school copy of Anthon's
Classical Dictionary; and to Edna they proved a literary Ophir of
inestimable value and exhaustless interest. Plutarch especially was a
Pisgah of letters, whence the vast domain of learning, the Canaan of
human wisdom, stretched alluringly before her; and as often as she
climbed this height, and viewed the wondrous scene beyond, it seemed,
indeed,
...... "an arch where through Gleams that untraveled world, whose
margin fades Forever and forever when we move."
In after years she sometimes questioned if this mount of observation
was also that of temptation, to which ambition had led her spirit, and
there bargained for and bought her future. Love of nature, love of
books, an earnest piety and deep religious enthusiasm