One golden summer 3 vols Author:Elizabeth Daniel Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 55 CHAPTER V. GRANDMAMMA. I" BELIEVE that one of the secrets of my dear grandmamma's popularity was that she carried out in her daily life the simple p... more »recept she was fond of enjoining, and never fell into the error, common to many excellent people, of making her own. standard of right and wrong a rule by which to judge the outward actions of her neighbours. Her only severe judgments had reference to herself, while those which concerned her erring fellow-creatures were eminently distinguished by that tender charity which believeth all things, and thinketh no evil. In the years that were past, she had gonethrough very deep waters, and it is probable that her capacity for intense suffering was exhausted when she lost my mother, who had been her supreme joy and delight for four-and-twenty years. After coming out of the long dark night that followed that bereavement, she had devoted herself to me, and to the quiet home duties that had previously engrossed her. To all outward appearance she took life easily and cheerfully, was pleased to be surrounded by bright, happy faces, interested herself, to a mild extent, in the joys and sorrows of her neighbours, preferred the companionship of the genial and unsaddened amongst them, but was tolerant and indulgent towards all. As a matter of course, there were to be found individuals of the extremely narrow- minded class, who disapproved of Mrs. Seton's easy-going ways and liberal judgments, who did not scruple to call her a latitudinarian, a broad churchwoman, and a vast number of other names which implieda lack of sympathy both with her precepts and her practice. But grandmamma was quite as lenient and forgiving towards these carping Christians as she was towards weak and erring humanity in general. Even when somebody once repeated...« less