Amanda now stepped forward to inform this conference that Paul had been spoiled by their example; that he cried when told he must go to meeting; and that it was better now not to urge the matter further.  In future, she intended to instruct Paul and Bridget herself; and she was resolved to cut off all intercourse between them and the younger members of the family.

Our readers are aware that Amanda was the Miss Prying, a child of her father by a former marriage; and besides this, she was an old maid.  In addition to the foregoing circumstances, she became pious, attended camp meetings, donation parties, and quilting matches at young ministers’ houses, who were just preparing to get a rib.  And though she was praised as the best needle lady in the town, her epistles on love to young preachers were the most admirable mixture of classical and biblical composition that could be found.  Though she had a good pair of hands at making pies, puddings, and other culinary preparations, though she was praised, flattered, and admired, yet nobody ever yet went beyond this.  All was admiration, praise, flattery, no more.  Again:  Amanda, though a strict old school Presbyterian, in order to exhibit her liberality and prove that she had no objection to a partner from any of the other countless sects of Protestantism, be he Baptist, Methodist, or Unitarian—­in order to prove her liberality, she attended the donations of the six ministers of her village, and each of the dominies received from her a neatly-worked handkerchief for pulpit use.  Yet, though she was at once liberal and strict, pious and politic; though she induced one Sally Dwyer to join her church and declare she “got the change of heart;” though she was eternally working and planning to bring others to her way of thinking, and had some success in her proselyting efforts,—­she never could, with all her art, biblical lore, and policy, succeed in causing any body to say, “I take thee, Amanda, to my wedded wife.”  This was the chief point; and here is just where she failed.  What was the cause of it?  She was not too old—­not near so old as Miss Longface, whom the youthful parson Barker lately wedded.  “And besides,” said she, in a soliloquy, “when I was young, it was just the same bad luck.  Is it that men are less numerous than ladies?  There might be something in that, for she had seen it stated in their newspaper, ’The Home Journal,’ that female births exceeded that of males by forty thousand annually in certain European kingdoms.  The number of Popish priests also,” she said, “who remain unmarried, adds greatly to the superfluity of the female sex.  Hence there is no part of the wicked Popish system I regard so much contrary to God’s holy word as celibacy.  Celibacy!” she cried aloud; “one of the doctrines of devils, as any one can tell, who has been these twenty years in search of a mate, and could never yet find one!  O horrid thought!” She had consulted the famous fortune