are constrained to admit that she was the lawful an only daughter and heiress of Pierre Laval, a French gentleman, a Parisian by birth, but a hair-dresser and barber by occupation. He had espoused, on his arrival in Boston, a young lady that came passenger in the same ship with him, who was descended from her father and mother, peasants in the neighbourhood of Bourdeaux. The girl bore a very good name-but what her name was we do not remember. This loving couple, on their marriage, were induced to migrate to the west, seeking their fortunes, with the sure prospect before them of bettering their condition, inasmuch as no change could well be for the worse. their pilgrimage, they chanced to stumble on the village of Rockville, just at the time it was beginning to assume a smiling air of happiness and plenty. The village still wanted settlers, and they were invited to stop, as soon as it was discovered that one was a barber and the other a

In

milliner.

milliner. They hired, and afterwards purchased a small tenement and plot of ground, and by the exercise of their respective talents upon the heads of the villagers, they acquired great fame and a little money. They had been blessed with one lovely child, the darling of its parents, named Rosine. But poor Rosine, in her fourth year, lost her fond mother, and her disconsolate father, of course, his beloved helpmate. Monsieur Pierre, who was tenderly attached to his wife, could not and would not be comforted for seven or eight months; at which period, however, he sought consolation in a second union with a stout country girl in the vicinity.

In the mean time, his orphan daughter had so gained upon the sympathies and good graces of his neighbours, the Misses Hughes, by her beauty and sparkling precocity, that they sought to withdraw her from the sway of her stepmother. They easily persuaded Pierre to relinquish C 4 the

the charge of her to them, when he took the charge of a second wife upon himself. They accordingly formally adopted her, by having her christened Rosine Laval Hughes, and declared their intention of educating her as their own, or, in their own words, " to make a lady of her." They have succeeded in it, as we shall by and by see; although it is an undertaking in which multitudes of fond fathers and mothers spend so much money without success. But little do these worthy ladies dream of what they have been laying up for themselves and her, by snatching her from the humble sphere in which her destiny had placed her.

As for Pierre, for fear some inquisitive reader may hereafter inquire what has become of him, we may as well, in this place as any other, dispatch him at once. The poor fellow, not finding his second spouse at all to his taste; and finding that she liked a drop of de sacré viskey too well, determined to be divorced from her in the

most

most delicate manner that it can be accomplished, and accordingly took French leave of her, one fine morning, and was never heard of after. It was rumoured that he returned to Paris, at the restoration of the Bourbons, and in quality of emigré, obtained a considerable post about the court. But we could never trace this report, and it is improbable enough in itself, to any responsible source.

At the time of Rosine's adoption, master Hugh Hughes, junior, was still a child of eight or nine years of age, although quite a man in the eyes of his three aunts, who considered him an epitome or miniature edition of the "admirable Crichton." Of course, he was too great a favourite to be contradicted in any thing he chose to fancy; and having conceived, from the first, a great esteem for Miss Rosine's playful humours, he, in the sixth or seventh year of her age, insisted upon her joining him in his studies, and they accordingly became fellow-students and inseparable

C 5

separable companions at home and at school. The dear creatures seemed to be so attached to each other, and both so good and faultless, that our worthy ladies encouraged their affection to the utmost of their power. But when master Hugh

had reached his fourteenth year, his uncle, who seldom interfered in family arrangements, happened to be seized with the humour of educating his nephew under his own eye, and away from home; and after a stout resistance from the young gentleman, and tears in abundance from his adopted cousin, together with sly projects of nullification, if not of rebellion, from the sisters, took him from his aunts' custody, and brought him to town, as we have before recorded. He was there compelled to seek consolation in his books, and his only revenge consisted in writing every week a long letter to his dear cousin Rosine, complaining of his uncle's despotism of the hard tasks inflicted upon him by his different masters-and

the