A Colonial Wooing
political feature of the province, and selected by his agent in town what little current literature drifted to Philadelphia; for Robert had always found shillings to spare when there was a book to be bought. These volumes were ever an attraction to Ruth, who had been taught to read and write by her mother, but with no other books in the house than those that treated of their religious society. "No Cross, no Crown" had been her spelling-book, and was now in use again as her brother's "reader." Matthew Watson had a mutilated copy of the Bible. It had originally been a portly volume carefully bound in leather, with elaborately tooled edges and corners and with ornate brass clasps. Besides the Old and New Testaments, there had been the order of Common Prayer, the Apocrypha, and the whole Book of Psalms, collected into English metre. All these had been cut out and destroyed, except a few pages of the rhymed version of the Psalms. These Ruth had found and most carefully concealed. To read them was one of her stolen pleasures, and from them she had received her earliest
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