It was settled that Master Byles Gridley and Mr. Gifted Hopkins should leave early in the morning of the day appointed, to take the nearest train to the city.  Mrs. Hopkins labored hard to get them ready, so that they might make a genteel appearance among the great people whom they would meet in society.  She brushed up Mr. Gridley’s best black suit, and bound the cuffs of his dress-coat, which were getting a little worried.  She held his honest-looking hat to the fire, and smoothed it while it was warm, until one would have thought it had just been ironed by the hatter himself.  She had his boots and shoes brought into a more brilliant condition than they had ever known:  if Gifted helped, it was to his credit as much as if he had shown his gratitude by polishing off a copy of verses in praise of his benefactor.

When she had got Mr. Gridley’s encumbrances in readiness for the journey, she devoted herself to fitting out her son Gifted.  First, she had down from the garret a capacious trunk, of solid wood, but covered with leather, and adorned with brass-headed nails, by the cunning disposition of which, also, the paternal initials stood out on the rounded lid, in the most conspicuous manner.  It was his father’s trunk, and the first thing that went into it, as the widow lifted the cover, and the smothering shut-up smell struck an old chord of associations, was a single tear-drop.  How well she remembered the time when she first unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed their snowy plaits!  O dear, dear!

But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old bottles into the new ones,—­off from the lees of the past generation, clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it.  Gifted Hopkins was his mother’s idol, and no wonder.  She had not only the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the mother of Hopkins.

So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence.  The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket.  Best clothes and common clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and “hot drops,” and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible, and a phial with hiera picra, and another with paregoric, and another with “camphire” for sprains and bruises,

—­Gifted went forth equipped for every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every malady from Ague to Zoster.  He carried also the paternal watch, a solid silver bull’s-eye, and a large pocketbook, tied round with a long tape, and, by way of precaution, pinned into his breast-pocket.  He talked about having a pistol, in case he were attacked by any of the ruffians who are so numerous in the city, but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would certainly shoot himself, and he shouldn’t think of letting him take a pistol.