“Well, I dunno; it’s some bigger,” was the reply.

“But it is a better sort of place, I am told; people from Edgartown don’t seem to think much of Holmes’s Hole.”

“No, nor the Holmes’s Hole folks don’t think much of Oldtown; it’s pretty much according to who you talk to, which place is called the handsomest, I reckon.”

“Athens or Rome, London or Paris, Oldtown or Holmes’s Hole, Mysie,” murmured Caleb, as their driver stopped to reply to the driver of “a team,” who was anxious to know when he was “a-goin’ to butcher agin.”

Edgartown proved to be a pretty little seaside town, with some handsome wooden houses, a little bank, and a very nice tavern, at which the travellers received very satisfactory entertainment.  The next day, reembarking upon the “Eagle’s Wing,” they soon reached New Bedford.

OCTOBER TO MAY.

    The day that brightens half the earth
        Is night to half.  Ah, sweet! 
    One’s mourning is another’s mirth;—­
You wear your bright years like a crown,—­
While mine, dead garlands, tangle down
        In chains about my feet.

    The breeze which wakes the folded flower
        Sweeps dead leaves from the tree;—­
    So partial Time, as hour by hour
He tells the rapid years,—­cheu! 
Brings bloom and beauty still to you,
        But leaves his blight with me.

    The rain which calls the violet up
        Out of the moistened mould
    Shatters the wind-flower’s fragile cup;—­
For even Nature has her pets,
And, favoring the new, forgets
        To love and spare the old.

    The shower which makes the bud a rose
        Beats off the lilac-bloom. 
    I am a lilac,—­so life goes,—­
A lilac that has outlived May;—­
You are a blush-rose.  Welladay! 
        I pass, and give you room!

THE ELEUSINIA.

What did the Eleusinia mean?  Perhaps, reader, you think the question of little interest.  “The Eleusinia!  Why, Lobeck made that little matter clear long ago; and there was Porphyry, who told us that the whole thing was only an illustration of the Platonic philosophy.  St. Croix, too,—­he made the affair as clear as day!”

But the question is not so easily settled, my friend; and I insist upon it that you have an interest in it.  Were I to ask you the meaning of Freemasonry, you would think that of importance; you could not utter the name without wonder; and it may be that there is even more wonder in it than you suspect,—­though you be an arch-mason yourself.  But in sight of Eleusis, freemasonry sinks into insignificance.  For, of all races, the Grecian was the most mysterious; and, of all Grecian mysteries, the Eleusinia were the mysteries par excellence.  They must certainly have meant something to Greece,—­something more than can ever be adequately known to us.  A farce is soon over; but the Eleusinia reached from the mythic Eumolpus to Theodosius the Great,—­nearly two thousand years.  Think you that all Athens, every fifth year, for more than sixty generations, went to Eleusis to witness and take part in a sham?