Beadle's Dime Novels No. 142: The Sagamore of Saco — page 27: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

‘DEIFIED. 29 Hope was from the first installed a favorite, and they watch- - ed her slightest look or word with interest, and then,-as years developed more and more her individual characteristics, she was invested by them with a profound awe. They had pene- trated some of these marked features, even before they were divined by her own family, and they would come long miles to bring her some dainty gift, exquisite tiny baskets, broidered moccasins, or shells from the sea-shore, and seating themselves upon the mat under the broad piazza, watch her every move- * ment, and listen to the silvery tongue of the child with hair like the snow-flake. , Had Hope been ambitious or deceitful, she might have turned her mysterious power over the sayage mind to some account; but, simple-hearted and truthful, she enjoyed her lit- tle triumphs without any thought of what might lie beyond. The chief of the Saco tribe, seeing her contempt for all house- hold avocations, looked upon her with wonder and delight as the incarnation of some of their own deities, who would eventually bring great glory to the tribe. Mistress Vines, while no one could bring the slightest charge against her, was by no means popular with the “ elect ladies ” of the colony. Mindful of her houseLold, over which she presided with affectionate dignity, and truly loving and hon- oring her husband, she was little inclined to countenance any course which should create any inierest outside of the sacred relation of the family. Thoughtful as “she was tender, judicious as she was affec- tionate, she was doubly happy in a husband worthy of all reyerence and duty, to whom she could refer ail abstruse and vexing questions of opinion, and whose.decisions were to her wifely mind the wisest and best. Mistress Bonyton, the mother of John, was in the habit of collecting the principal women of the colony at her house on the Saturday of every week, for the purposes of prayer and religious discussion. ; Mistress Vines had received many invitations to join this supplicating conclave, but from the above reasons, together with a natural vivacity of character, which rendered gloom and pretensiom distasteful to her, she had neglected to aliy herself with these ascetic women in what ske regarded as an —a 2 . COMICIOOXS.COMy _ é . 2 s ES ——