the Concord School of Philosophy.  I have not my poems by me here, but I remember that ’The Height of the Ridiculous’ ended with this verse: 

    “Ten days and nights, with sleepless eye,
     I watched that wretched man,
    And since, I never dare to write
     As funny as I can.”

     “But tell your nephew he mustn’t cry about it any more than because
     geese go barefoot and bald eagles have no nightcaps.  The verses are
     in all the editions of my poems.

     “Believe me, dear Mrs. Stanton,

     “Very Truly and Respectfully Yours,

     “OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES.”

After spending the holidays in New York city, we started for Johnstown in a “stage sleigh, conveying the United States mail,” drawn by spanking teams of four horses, up the Hudson River valley.  We were three days going to Albany, stopping over night at various points; a journey now performed in three hours.  The weather was clear and cold, the sleighing fine, the scenery grand, and our traveling companions most entertaining, so the trip was very enjoyable.  From Albany to Schenectady we went in the railway cars; then another sleighride of thirty miles brought us to Johnstown.  My native hills, buried under two feet of snow, tinted with the last rays of the setting sun, were a beautiful and familiar sight.  Though I had been absent but ten months, it seemed like years, and I was surprised to find how few changes had occurred since I left.  My father and mother, sisters Madge and Kate, the old house and furniture, the neighbors, all looked precisely the same as when I left them.  I had seen so much and been so constantly on the wing that I wondered that all things here should have stood still.  I expected to hear of many births, marriages, deaths, and social upheavals, but the village news was remarkably meager.  This hunger for home news on returning is common, I suppose, to all travelers.

Our trunks unpacked, wardrobes arranged in closets and drawers, the excitement of seeing friends over, we spent some time in making plans for the future.

My husband, after some consultation with my father, decided to enter his office and commence the study of the law.  As this arrangement kept me under the parental roof, I had two added years of pleasure, walking, driving, and riding on horseback with my sisters.  Madge and Kate were dearer to me than ever, as I saw the inevitable separation awaiting us in the near future.  In due time they were married and commenced housekeeping—­Madge in her husband’s house near by, and Kate in Buffalo.  All my sisters were peculiarly fortunate in their marriages; their husbands being men of fine presence, liberal education, high moral character, and marked ability.  These were pleasant and profitable years.  I devoted them to reading law, history, and political economy, with occasional interruptions to take part in some temperance or anti-slavery excitement.