on a superior power.
    »Father -« said Mabel, wiping her eyes, and endeavoring to compose features
that were pallid, and actually quivering with emotion - »I will pray with you -
for you - for myself, for us all. The petition of the feeblest and humblest is
never unheeded.«
    There was something sublime, as well as much that was supremely touching in
this act of filial piety. The quiet, but earnest manner in which this young
creature prepared herself to perform this duty, the self-abandonment with which
she forgot her sex's timidity and sex's shame, in order to sustain her parent at
that trying moment, the loftiness of purpose with which she directed all her
powers to the immense object before her, with a woman's devotion, and a woman's
superiority to trifles, when her affections make the appeals, and the holy calm
into which her grief was compressed, rendered her, for the moment, an object of
something very like awe and veneration to her companions.
    Mabel had been religiously and reasonably educated; equally without
exaggeration and without self-sufficiency. Her reliance on God, was cheerful and
full of hope, while it was of the humblest and most dependant nature. She had
been accustomed from childhood, to address herself to the Deity, in prayer; -
taking example from the divine mandate of Christ himself, who commanded his
followers to abstain from vain repetitions and who has left behind him a
petition that is unequalled for sublimity and sententiousness, as if expressly
to rebuke the disposition of man to set up his own loose and random thoughts as
the most acceptable sacrifice. The sect in which she had been reared, has
furnished to its followers some of the most beautiful compositions of the
language, as a suitable vehicle for its adoration and solicitations. Accustomed
to this mode of public and even private prayer, the mind of our heroine had
naturally fallen into its train of lofty thought, her taste had become improved
by its study, and her language elevated and enriched by its phrases. In short,
Mabel, in this respect, was an instance of the influence of familiarity with
propriety of thought, fitness of language, and decorum of manner, on the habits
and expressions of even those who might be supposed not to be always so
susceptible of receiving high impressions of this nature. When she kneeled at
the bedside of her father, the very reverence of her attitude and manner,
prepared the spectators for what was to come, and as her affectionate heart
prompted her tongue, and memory came in aid of both, the petition