and informing me that this advice was found in every language, if not dialect, in the world.  He loved every inch of his country home, was interested in farming, flowers, the water-view and fish-pond, fond of long walks, and preferred the simple life.  In his rooms were many souvenirs of early travel.  His walls were covered with the finest engravings and paintings from the best American artists.  He was too willing to be imposed upon by young authors and would-be poets.  He said:  “People expect too much of me, altogether too much.”  That Sunday was his last before his address on Mazzini in Central Park.  He finished with the hot sun over his head, and walking across the park to the house of Grant Wilson, he fell down faint and hopelessly ill on the doorstep.  He never rallied, and after thirteen days the end came.  An impressive warning to the old, who are selfishly urged to do hard tasks, that they must conserve their own vitality.  Bryant was eighty-four when killed by over-exertion, with a mind as wonderful as ever.

I will now recount the conditions when Ezekiel Webster and his second wife took their wedding trip in a “one hoss shay” to the White Mountains in 1826.

Grandma lived to be ninety-six, with her mind as clear as ever, and two years before her death she gave me this story of their experiences at that time.  My mother told me she knew of more than thirty proposals she had received after grandfather’s death, but she said “she would rather be the widow of Ezekiel Webster, than the wife of any other man.”  The following is her own description.

The only house near the Crawford Notch was the Willey House, in which the family were living.  A week before a slide had come down by the side of the house and obstructed the road.  Mr. Willey and two men came to our assistance, taking out the horse and lifting the carriage over the debris.

They described the terrors of the night of the slide.  The rain was pouring in torrents, the soil began to slide from the tops of the rocks, taking with it trees, boulders, and all in its way; the crashing and thundering were terrible.  Three weeks later the entire family, nine in number, in fleeing to a place of refuge, were overtaken by a second slide and all buried.

The notch was then as nature made it; no steam whistle or car clatter had intruded upon its solitude.  The first moving object we saw after passing through was a man in the distance.  He proved to be Ethan Crawford, who kept the only house of entertainment.  He was walking leisurely, drawing a rattlesnake along by its tail.  He had killed the creature and was taking it home as a trophy.  He was a stalwart man, who had always lived among the mountains, and had become as familiar with the wild beasts as with the cat and dog of his own home.  He said that only a few days before he had passed a bear drinking at a spring.  He led the way to his house, a common farmhouse without paint,