Clinton's vacant office was again occupied by a
young lawyer, who came into the village, from New York, named Henry
Lorton, and half the young ladies' heads were turned, by the beauty
and elegance of the young northerner. Parties were formed, walks
projected up the mountains, moonlight sails upon the silvery bosom of
the Juniata, and every means devised to draw the young lawyer into
company, and love with the southern beauties; but they declared his
heart was as cold as the region he came from.
All these things Henriette heard, as she sat plying her needle, or
stood fitting a dress to the forms of some of her gay companions;
but now her interests were separate from theirs, and she toiled on,
through the weary day. There were some who appreciated her motives,
and spoke kindly to the poor orphan, and the sweet consciousness of
well doing sweetened her cup of toil.
Henry Lorton was educated upon liberal New England principles, and
his mother was a dress-maker before her marriage with his father, and
besides, he had ever been taught to respect the industrious part
of the community, and his high minded principles revolted from the
overbearing aristocracy of the place, and therefore, he appeared
reserved to those with whom he associated.
Henriette felt grieved as she visited her father's grave; there was no
monument erected at his head, while at her mother's stood an elegant
polished marble one, of great value, having a female bearing an infant
in her arms, chiselled upon it, and this one thought occupied her
mind; she would rise early and eat the bread of carefulness, might she
but erect a monument to her father's grave; and often she burned the
midnight lamp, and rose before the stars had faded from the sky, to
accomplish her holy purpose.
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