The Juvenile Gleaner, Ed. by J. W. Fitzharding

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1840* edition. Excerpt: ...do, and she ascended the staircase to the milliner's brilliant show-rooms with her mind in a tumult of indecision. Helen Creswell was at this time only eighteen years of age. She was a sweet, amiable, affectionate girl, but her character had one material defect; it wanted firmness. It is true that nothing can be more unlovely in woman than obstinacy and self-will; or more graceful and winning than that temper which "seeketh not its own," but can, without a struggle, yield to the wishes, the prejudices, or even the wayward whims of others. But this blessed disposition is not incompatible with the moral courage that, in all circumstances, dares to do what is right, and to be destitute of which is to be cast upon a stormy sea, without ballast to steady, or rudder to guide, the vessel. When Helen said that she could not afford to have a new ball-dress, and that she must not ask her father for more money, she spoke from an intimate knowledge of his situation and circumstances. She was the daughter of an old naval officer; a man who, in the course of a life of hard service, had reaped more laurels than riches; and his patrimonial inheritance, as a younger son of a large and not an opulent family, being very small, his chief dependence was on the pension by which, at the close of the war, his king and country had shown their grateful sense of his merits. Still, however, to maintain that station in society which his birth and rank in his profession required, to secure the means of giving to his son, who, from his earliest years had expressed a wish of entering the church, an education at one of the universities, and, still more, to indulge the generous feelings of his nature in the relief of misery and distress, required from Captain...