A single poplar may have a severe and uncharitable look, but a row of them suggests the antique and pleasing pomp and ceremony of their early days, before the sideboard cupboards were only used to keep the boxes of strings and nails and the duster; and the best decanters were put on a high shelf, while the plain ones were used for vinegar in the kitchen closet.  There is far less social visiting from house to house than there used to be.  People in the smaller towns have more acquaintances who live at a distance than was the case before the days of railroads, and there are more guests who come from a distance, which has something to do with making tea-parties and the entertainment of one’s neighbors less frequent than in former times.  But most of the New England towns have changed their characters in the last twenty years, since the manufactories have come in and brought together large numbers either of foreigners or of a different class of people from those who used to make the most of the population.  A certain class of families is rapidly becoming extinct.  There will be found in the older villages very few persons left who belong to this class, which was once far more important and powerful; the oldest churches are apt to be most thinly attended simply because a different sort of ideas, even of heavenly things, attract the newer residents.  I suppose that elderly people have said, ever since the time of Shem, Ham, and Japhet’s wives in the ark, that society is nothing to what it used to be, and we may expect to be always told what unworthy successors we are of our grandmothers.  But the fact remains that a certain element of American society is fast dying out, giving place to the new; and with all our glory and pride in modern progress and success we cling to the old associations regretfully.  There is nothing to take the place of the pleasure we have in going to see our old friends in the parlors which have changed little since our childhood.  No matter how advanced in years we seem to ourselves we are children still to the gracious hostess.  Thank Heaven for the friends who have always known us!  They may think us unreliable and young still; they may not understand that we have become busy and more or less important people to ourselves and to the world,—­we are pretty sure to be without honor in our own country, but they will never forget us, and we belong to each other and always shall.

I have received many kindnesses at my friends’ hands, but I do not know that I have ever felt myself to be a more fortunate or honored guest than I used years ago, when I sometimes went to call upon an elderly friend of my mother who lived in most pleasant and stately fashion.  I used to put on my very best manner, and I have no doubt that my thoughts were well ordered, and my conversation as proper as I knew how to make it.  I can remember that I used to sit on a tall ottoman, with nothing to lean against, and my feet were off soundings, I was so high above