given up to these thin-spun joys; he gave himself larger satisfactions. He determined to drive in the first nail with his own hands, to lay the smooth foundation-stones of Nora's culture, to teach her to read and write and cipher, to associate himself largely with the growth of her primal sense of things. Behold him thus converted into a gentle pedagogue, prompting her with small caresses and correcting her with smiles. A moted morning sunbeam used to enter his little study, and, resting on Nora's auburn hair, seemed to make of the place a humming school-room. Roger began also to anticipate the future exactions of preceptorship. He plunged into a course of useful reading, and devoured a hundred volumes on education, on hygiene, on morals, on history. He drew up a table of rules and observances for the child's health; he weighed and measured her food, and spent hours with Lucinda, the minister's wife, and the doctor, in the discussion of her regimen and clothing. He bought her a pony, and rode with her over the neighboring country, roamed with her in the woods and fields, and picked out nice acquaintances for her among the little damsels of the country-side. A doting granddam, in all this matter, could not have shown a finer genius for detail. His zeal indeed left him very little peace, and Lucinda often endeavored to assuage it by the assurance that he was fretting himself away and wearing himself thin on his happiness. He passed a dozen times a week from the fear of coddling and spoiling the child to the fear of letting her run wild and grow coarse and rustic. Sometimes he dismissed her tasks for days together, and kept her idling at his side in the winter sunshine; sometimes for
