"Yes, a pretty pass; but I might have known better than to send my children to such a school." Mr.Lincoln could not forbear asking her in a laughing way, "if the schools which she attended were of a higher order than Mount Holyoke." Bursting into tears, Mrs.Lincoln replied that "she didn't think she ought to be _twitted_ of her poverty." "Neither do I," returned her husband.

"You were no more to blame for working in the factory, than Mary is for having been a pauper!" Mrs.Lincoln was silent, for she did not particularly care to hear about her early days, when she had been an operative in the cotton mills of Southbridge.

She had possessed just enough beauty to captivate the son of the proprietor, who was fresh from college, and after a few weeks' acquaintance they were married.

Fortunately her husband was a man of good sense, and restrained her from the commission of many foolish acts.

Thus when she insisted upon sending for Rose and Jenny, he promptly replied that they should not come home! Still, as Rose seemed discontented, complaining that so much exercise made her side and shoulder ache, and as Jenny did not wish to remain another year unless Mary did, he consented that they should leave school at the close of the term, on condition that they went somewhere else.
"I shall never make any thing of Henry," said he, "but my daughters shall receive every advantage, and perhaps one or the other of them will comfort my old age." He had spoken truly with regard to Henry, who was studying, or pretending to study law in the same office with Billy Bender.