To see Mary Mathews to advantage, when the better nature of her
womanhood triumphed over the coarse rude habits to which her peculiar
education had given birth, was when surrounded by her weanling calves
and cosset lambs, or working in her pretty garden that skirted the road.
There, among her flowers, with her splendid locks waving round her sunny
brow, and singing as blithe as any bird, some rural ditty or ballad of
the days gone by, she looked the simple, unaffected, lovely country
girl. The traveller paused at the gate to listen to her song, to watch
her at her work, and to beg a flower from her hand. Even the proud
aristocratic country gentleman, as he rode past, doffed his hat, and
saluted courteously the young Flora whose smiling face floated before
him during his homeward ride.
Uncontrolled by the usages of the world, and heedless of its good or bad
opinion, Mary became a law to herself--a headstrong, wayward, passionate
creature; shunned by her own sex, who regarded her as their common
enemy, and constantly thrown into contact with the worst and most
ignorant of the other, it was not to be wondered at that she became an
object of suspicion to all.
With a mind capable of much good, but constantly exposed to much evil,
Mary felt with bitterness that she had no friend among her village
associates who could share her feelings, or enjoy her unfeminine
pursuits.
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