Only young saplings were planted, and these were*not expected to grow up in a season, but the work was done, and the children thought it the finest improvement yet made. It proved in a few years to be the most notable feature on the place, which was acknowledged to be the handsomest in the neighborhood. The children worked so much on it that they learned to love it, and they acquired more practical knowledge in the year that they devoted themselves to its beautifying, than they would have gained in a theoretical study of rural life in thrice that time. When the new school term began, and they returned to their books, it was with the comfortable feeling that they had the prettiest home in all the coun- try round about, and were all the more proud of its fame, because they had helped to make it attractive. They were proud as well of the fact that their mother was making the place self-supporting by the admirable way in which she managed the farm. It became in the course of a few years renowned for its fruit and marketable stuff, and the sale of its surplus crops gave to the mother what she had craved as only a mother can — pecuniary independence for the sake of her children. It was not the life she preferred, nor the one she was best 356 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. • fitted for or entitled to, by right of her talents; but it was the best under the circumstances, and the feeling that she had been able to lead it was a gratifying one. That mother was the ideal one, because she was great-hearted, gifted, and above all things she was wise. She was a woman whose native qualities of mind and heart, whose rectitude and bravery would have fitted her to adorn the highest stations in life ; but it was her lot to be an unpretending wife and mother ; to live a retired domestic career, finding no great reward in doing her daily duty, but doing it well nevertheless. In all her life she was not compensated for the effort she had made, the sufferings inflicted by others that she had endured so patiently. But she respected herself, and was true to the highest impulses of her being. So beautiful a character could not live in vain, did not. Her influence was far reaching and powerful. Those who came under it were the better ever afterward. Her husband's nature was transformed under it, and her children, inheriting much of his indifference and irascibility of temper, were moulded into better beings than they could have been under any less noble hand than guided them. They grew to be men and women, and, separated widely by circumstance, were nevertheless forever bound together by the memory of her love. To have been her child was a gracious boon deeply appreciated in after years, when her true superiority was fully understood through acquaintance with the world. Taught and trained by so good and intelligent a woman, how easy to face and conquer temptation and sin, and to travel along the dusty highway of life, soiled perhaps for the time being by the dust or mire met with, but not stained ineffaceably.

AI-modernized reading of the original text

Only young saplings were planted, and these were*not expected to grow up in a season, but the work was done, and the children thought it the finest improvement yet made. It proved in a few years to be the most notable feature on the place, which was acknowledged to be the handsomest in the neighborhood. The children worked so much on it that they learned to love it, and they acquired more practical knowledge in the year that they devoted themselves to its beautifying, than they would have gained in a theoretical study of rural life in thrice that time. When the new school term began, and they returned to their books, it was with the comfortable feeling that they had the prettiest home in all the country round about, and were all the more proud of its fame, because they had helped to make it attractive. They were proud as well of the fact that their mother was making the place self-supporting by the admirable way in which she managed the farm. It became in the course of a few years renowned for its fruit and marketable stuff, and the sale of its surplus crops gave to the mother what she had craved as only a mother can — pecuniary independence for the sake of her children. It was not the life she preferred, nor the one she was best 356 THE hearthstone; or, life at home. • fitted for or entitled to, by right of her talents; but it was the best under the circumstances, and the feeling that she had been able to lead it was a gratifying one. That mother was the ideal one, because she was great-hearted, gifted, and above all things she was wise. She was a woman whose native qualities of mind and heart, whose rectitude and bravery would have fitted her to adorn the highest stations in life ; but it was her lot to be an unpretending wife and mother ; to live a retired domestic career, finding no great reward in doing her daily duty, but doing it well nevertheless. In all her life she was not compensated for the effort she had made, the sufferings inflicted by others that she had endured so patiently. But she respected herself, and was true to the highest impulses of her being. So beautiful a character could not live in vain, did not. Her influence was far reaching and powerful. Those who came under it were the better ever afterward. Her husband's nature was transformed under it, and her children, inheriting much of his indifference and irascibility of temper, were moulded into better beings than they could have been under any less noble hand than guided them. They grew to be men and women, and, separated widely by circumstance, were nevertheless forever bound together by the memory of her love. To have been her child was a gracious boon deeply appreciated in after years, when her true superiority was fully understood through acquaintance with the world. Taught and trained by so good and intelligent a woman, how easy to face and conquer temptation and sin, and to travel along the dusty highway of life, soiled perhaps for the time being by the dust or mire met with, but not stained ineffaceably.

The hearthstone; or, Life at home