Rachel didn’t color at this, but remarked, a little roguishly, that she would rather have one of those sidelong looks I used to give her in the old school-house than all the admiration in the world.

This was the time when I chose my profession, as mentioned in the beginning.  And I may say that we have had a good time all our lives.  Yet we have known sorrow.  Four times has the dark shadow fallen upon our hearts; four sad processions have passed up the narrow lane; four little graves, by the side of Aunt Huldah’s, show where, standing together, we wept tears of agony!  Yet we stood together; and Rachel, who knew so well, taught me how to bear.  In every hour of anguish I have found myself leaning upon the strong, steadfast “soul of Rachel Lowe.”  I say still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one another all our lives.  And we have never been too much alone.  Plenty of friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get stirred up generally.  We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery Conventions.  I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up, or wearing off the rust.  That couple whom you may have noticed sitting near the platform—­that bald-headed old gentleman and intelligent-looking elderly lady—­are my wife and I. We met with the early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the streets, and heard Phillips’s first speech in Faneuil Hall.

I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don’t look sideways now:  for the girls never think that an old man cares to see them; but he does.  We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will turn out better than his father.  May he go through life as happily!  And he is in a fair way for it.  I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty daughter of my friend the watchmaker.  If my good friend thinks to keep always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on the seat in the low-branching apple-tree.

* * * * *

PICTOR IGNOTUS.

Human nature is impatient of mysteries.  The occurrence of an event out of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little ant-hill of ours.  There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong, a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone.  Indeed, so great is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as mysterious.  The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring them that it was “only a phenomenon,” was but one of a great host of wiseacres who stand ready with brush and paint-pot to label every new development, and fancy that in so doing they have abundantly answered every reasonable inquiry concerning cause, character, and consequence.