“The ’A.C.’!” said Mr. Billings.  “Bless me, Eunice! how long it is since we have talked of that summer!  I had almost forgotten that there ever was an A.C....  Well, the A.C. culminated in ’45.  You remember something of the society of Norridgeport, the last winter you were there?  Abel Mallory, for instance?”

“Let me think a moment,” said Mr. Johnson, reflectively.  “Really, it seems like looking back a hundred years.  Mallory,—­wasn’t that the sentimental young man, with wispy hair, a tallowy skin, and big, sweaty hands, who used to be spouting Carlyle on the ‘reading evenings’ at Shelldrake’s?  Yes, to be sure; and there was Hollins, with his clerical face and infidel talk,—­and Pauline Ringtop, who used to say, ’The Beautiful is the Good.’  I can still hear her shrill voice singing, ‘Would that I were beautiful, would that I were fair!’”

There was a hearty chorus of laughter at poor Miss Ringtop’s expense.  It harmed no one, however; for the tar-weed was already thick over her Californian grave.

“Oh, I see,” said Mr. Billings, “you still remember the absurdities of those days.  In fact, I think you partially saw through them then.  But I was younger, and far from being so clearheaded, and I looked upon those evenings at Shelldrake’s as being equal, at least, to the symposia of Plato.  Something in Mallory always repelled me.  I detested the sight of his thick nose, with the flaring nostrils, and his coarse, half-formed lips, of the bluish color of raw corned-beef.  But I looked upon these feelings as unreasonable prejudices, and strove to conquer them, seeing the admiration which he received from others.  He was an oracle on the subject of ‘Nature.’  Having eaten nothing for two years, except Graham bread, vegetables without salt, and fruits, fresh or dried, he considered himself to have attained an antediluvian purity of health,—­or that he would attain it, so soon as two pimples on his left temple should have healed.  These pimples he looked upon as the last feeble stand made by the pernicious juices left from the meat he had formerly eaten and the coffee he had drunk.  His theory was, that through a body so purged and purified none but true and natural impulses could find access to the soul.  Such, indeed, was the theory we all held....

“Shelldrake was a man of more pretence than real cultivation, as I afterwards discovered.  He was in good circumstances, and always glad to receive us at his house, as this made him virtually the chief of our tribe, and the outlay for refreshments involved only the apples from his own orchard, and water from his well....

“Well, ’t was in the early part of ’45,—­I think in April,—­when we were all gathered together, discussing, as usual, the possibility of leading a life in accordance with Nature.  Abel Mallory was there, and Hollins, and Miss Ringtop, and Faith Levis, with her knitting,—­and also Eunice Hazleton, a lady whom you have never seen, but you may take my wife as her representative....