Low Life Above Stairs.

Letitia returned with a heavy heart to Cranberry Hall, a place of residence where the could expect little peace, and where the employments, conversation, and amusements, were no-way congenial to her own. Though she was the most dutiful of daughters, her parents seemed formed and educated to be the perfect contrast of what she most valued and admired, in their tempers and opinions, in their objects and pursuits, in their principles and manners. Their summum bonum ²¹⁰ was wealth, in the acquisition of which they had employed their past, and were determined to devote their remaining days. This was their only standard of excellence, and the principal if not sole theme of their study and conversation. Their language, sentiments, / and manners, were gross, as their birth, education, and employments. Letitia, on the contrary, to a mild and generous disposition, had added all those graceful accomplishments, refined sentiments, and liberal pursuits, which the best schools in their cities could teach and cultivate. Dr. Homily had, indeed, himself given a happy direction to her taste and talents, and supplied her with the most improving books his library could afford. Colonel Beekman, her proposed consort, was a gentleman about forty years of age, five feet two inches in height, and ten feet, or upwards, in circumference. He was of a swarthy complexion, and having spent most of his life among the natives of Curaçoa and St. Eustatius, where he had amassed a considerable fortune by smuggling, was a perfect Creole in his manners and dialect. He troubled Letitia very little with his company, having no relish for her conversation, and thinking it most convenient and safe to court her / consent through her parents. Indeed he was so self-important from his immense wealth, and held in such high veneration for it by his associates, that he had no conception that the honour of his hand could be refused in an American colony. Old Forester and his wife were of the same opinion, and thought Letitia’s consent would be a matter of course; they had, therefore, never troubled themselves, or her, by dwelling much on the subject.