AND CALL IT ABELARD.



will have in it no part of my own life, save as it wvas sometimes
interwoven w ith. the lives of those whose history I write. aIam
only Esther Armstrong, the village school-mistress, a plain, old-
fashioned woman of thirty-five, with no incident whatever in my
life worth recording ; and so, with no thought that any one will
accuse me of egotism or conceit, I write (down



                      CHAPTER I.,

                  AND CALL IT ABELARD.

       HE Schuylers were of Holland descent, and had mar-
         ried and intermarried in England and America, and
         had in their family a title, it was said, and they
boasted of their Dutch blood, and English blood, and Amer-
can blood, and, like the famous Miss MNIcBride, "were proud
of their money and proud of their pride," and proud to be
known as "the Schuylers of New York," who had for so
many years kept themselves free from anything approaching to
lebeianism, and whose wealth and importance had been steadily
on the increase since the first English Schuyler left his ances-
tral halls in Lincolnshire across the sea. But the race was
gradually dying out, and the only male member of the direct
line in America was Colonel Howard, a proud., reticent man,
who, a few years before my story opens, had married Miss
Emily Rossiter, a lady fully tip to the Schuyler standard of moral
and social worth.
  It was true she brought with her a plain face and a brain not
overburdened with ideas, but she added to these the sum of two
hundred thousand dollars and an exclusiveness which sawv noth-
ing outside her own narrow circle of friends. At the time of
her marriage her husband, Colonel Howard Schuyler, who loved
the fresh grass and the air from the hills better than brick walls
and stony pavements, suggested that they should spend a por-
tion of the summer at his country-seat on the river, but to this
the lady weuld not listen. Hampstead was too quiet. Her



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