Three generations

io BALASS DAYS
unknown fatigues and dangers, in order to understand
how limited was the environment of our predecessors,
how circumscribed were the lives they led, how deep
and unchecked their partialities and prejudices.
That early, unceremoniously-enacted marriage was
a notably happy one. The couple faced many troubles
and sorrows together, with a cloud of adversity drawing
nearer and nearer and gradually closing down on
them. But where their mutual relations were con-
cerned there, at least, was " no defeat." Whatever
illusions my grandfather had to renounce, whatever
disappointments he had to suffer, the image of his wise
and gentle " Nellie " as the flower of womankind was
never eclipsed in his estimation. And to her he
remained the beau-ideal of manliness and kindness.
His generosity might be taken advantage of, his trust
abused, but these were his neighbours' shortcomings,
and in no way impaired his merits. After a faithful
union of many years, death took her from him, but
during the time he survived her the memory of her
lasted with him, the sweetest thing he possessed.
When he was an old man, crippled by rheumatism and
paralyzed, a prisoner in his wheeled chair among the
grandchildren playing round him, the little girls who
bore the Christian name of the wife of his youth were
always recognized as having a special attraction for
him.
The homely old farmhouse, situated in the centre of
its barns and byres, and encompassed, not only by the
dwellers in the stalls, but by the inhabitants of the
bothy and the cot-houses, might not be an elegant nor,
in the judgment of modern critics, an altogether sani-
tary habitation ; but no one could deny its cheerful
sociability. It was a little colony and kingdom in