and almost enough to ensure your being known as odd.  He walked about ten paces, and went and came on the same path, while on the wall above a large gray cat followed his motions to and fro, as if having some personal interest in his movements.  Against an apricot tree leaned Mr. Wholesome, watching with gleams of amusement the cat and the man, and now and then filliping at her a bit of plaster which he pulled from the wall.  Then the cat would start up alert, and the man’s face would get to be quizzically unconscious; after which the cat would settle down and the game begin anew.  By and by I was struck with the broad shoulders and easy way in which Wholesome carried his head, and the idea came to me that he had more strength than was needed by a member of the Society of Friends, or than could well have been acquired with no greater exercise of the limbs than is sanctioned by its usages.  In the garden were also three elderly men, all of them quiet and clerkly, who sat on and about the steps of the other window and chatted of the India ships and cargoes, their talk having a flavor of the spices of Borneo and of well-sunned madeira.  These were servants of the great India houses when commerce had its nobles and lines were sharply drawn in social life.

I was early in bed, and rising betimes went down to breakfast, which was a brief meal, this being, as Mr. Wholesome said to me, the short end of the day.  I should here explain that Mr. Wholesome was a junior partner in the house in which I was to learn the business before going to China.  Thus he was the greatest person by far in our little household, although on this he did not presume, but seemed to me greatly moved toward jest and merriment, and to sway to and fro between gayety and sadness, or at the least gravity, but more toward the latter when Mistress White was near, she seeming always to be a checking conscience to his mirth.

On this morning, as often after, he desired me to walk with him to our place of business, of which I was most glad, as I felt shy and lonely.  Walking down Arch street, I was amazed at its cleanliness, and surprised at the many trees and the unfamiliar figures in Quaker dresses walking leisurely.  But what seemed to me most curious of all were the plain square meeting-houses of the Friends, looking like the toy houses of children.  I was more painfully impressed by the appearance of the graves, one so like another, without mark or number, or anything in the disposition of them to indicate the strength of those ties of kinship and affection which death had severed.  Yet I grew to like this quiet highway, and when years after I was in Amsterdam the resemblance of its streets to those of the Friends here at home overcame me with a crowd of swift-rushing memories.  As I walked down of a morning to my work, I often stopped as I crossed Fifth street to admire the arch of lindens that barred the view to the westward, or to gaze at the inscription on the ‘Prentices’ Library, still plain to see, telling that the building was erected in the eighth year of the Empire.