They had always been till now under their mother's anxious tutelage, and had looked up to their neighbour of Mount Vernon as their guide, director, friend--as, indeed, almost everybody seemed to do who came in contact with the simple and upright young man.

Himself of the most scrupulous gravity and good breeding, in his communication with other folks he appeared to exact, or, at any rate, to occasion, the same behaviour.

His nature was above levity and jokes: they seemed out of place when addressed to him.

He was slow of comprehending them: and they slunk as it were abashed out of his society.

"He always seemed great to me," says Harry Warrington, in one of his letters many years after the date of which we are writing; "and I never thought of him otherwise than of a hero.