distant view of Plymouth Bay and the Mayflower tried to convince the
spectator that he was transported, among other antediluvians, by that
Noah's ark, to the New World. On either hand hung the little Flora's
great-grandmother-in-law, and her great-grandfather accordingly, Mrs.
Mehitable and Parson Job Hyde, peering out, one from a bushy ornament of
pink laurel-blossoms, and the other from an airy and delicate garland of
the wanton sweet-pea, each stony pair of eyes seeming to glare with
Medusan intent at this profaning of their state and dignity. "Isn't it
charming, dear?" said the innocent little beauty, with a satisfaction
half doubtful, as her husband's laugh went on.

But for every butterfly there comes an end to summer. The flowers
dropped from the frames and died in the garden; a pitiless winter set
in; and day after day the mittened and mufflered schoolboy, dragging his
sled through drifts of heavy snow to school, eyed curiously the wan,
wistful face of Judge Hyde's wife pressed up to the pane of the south
window, its great restless eyes and shadowy hair bringing to mind some
captive bird that pines and beats against the cage. Her husband absent
from home long and often, full of affairs of "court and state,"--her
delicate organization, that lost its flickering vitality by every
exposure to cold,--her lonely days and nights,--the interminable sewing,
that now, for her own reasons, she would trust to no hands but her
own,--conscious incapacity to be what all the women about her were,
stirring, active, hardy housekeepers,--a vague sense of shame, and a
great dread of the future,--her comfortless and motherless
condition,--slowly, but surely, like frost, and wind, and rain, and
snow, beat on this frail blossom, and it went with the rest. June roses
were laid against her dark hair and in her fair hands, when she was
carried to the lonely graveyard of Greenfield, where mulleins and
asters, golden-rod, blackberry-vines, and stunted yellow-pines adorned