All his life Eli Bolton had been giving young fellows a lift, and shouldering the loses when things turned out unfortunately.  His ledger, take-it-altogether, would not show a balance on the right side; but perhaps the losses on his books will turn out to be credits in a world where accounts are kept on a different basis.  The left hand of the ledger will appear the right, looked at from the other side.

Philip, wrote to Ruth rather a comical account of the bursting up of the city of Napoleon and the navigation improvement scheme, of Harry’s flight and the Colonel’s discomfiture.  Harry left in such a hurry that he hadn’t even time to bid Miss Laura Hawkins good-bye, but he had no doubt that Harry would console himself with the next pretty face he saw —­a remark which was thrown in for Ruth’s benefit.  Col.  Sellers had in all probability, by this time, some other equally brilliant speculation in his brain.

As to the railroad, Philip had made up his mind that it was merely kept on foot for speculative purposes in Wall street, and he was about to quit it.  Would Ruth be glad to hear, he wondered, that he was coming East?  For he was coming, in spite of a letter from Harry in New York, advising him to hold on until he had made some arrangements in regard to contracts, he to be a little careful about Sellers, who was somewhat visionary, Harry said.

The summer went on without much excitement for Ruth.  She kept up a correspondence with Alice, who promised a visit in the fall, she read, she earnestly tried to interest herself in home affairs and such people as came to the house; but she found herself falling more and more into reveries, and growing weary of things as they were.  She felt that everybody might become in time like two relatives from a Shaker establishment in Ohio, who visited the Boltons about this time, a father and son, clad exactly alike, and alike in manners.  The son; however, who was not of age, was more unworldly and sanctimonious than his father; he always addressed his parent as “Brother Plum,” and bore himself, altogether in such a superior manner that Ruth longed to put bent pins in his chair.  Both father and son wore the long, single breasted collarless coats of their society, without buttons, before or behind, but with a row of hooks and eyes on either side in front.  It was Ruth’s suggestion that the coats would be improved by a single hook and eye sewed on in the small of the back where the buttons usually are.

Amusing as this Shaker caricature of the Friends was, it oppressed Ruth beyond measure; and increased her feeling of being stifled.