r how it
was exactly, there is no telling, but poor China Aster fell to the
earth, and, striking his head sharply, was picked up senseless. It was a
day in July; such a light and heat as only the midsummer banks of the
inland Ohio know. China Aster was taken home on a door; lingered a few
days with a wandering mind, and kept wandering on, till at last, at dead
of night, when nobody was aware, his spirit wandered away into the other
world.

"Old Plain Talk and Old Prudence, neither of whom ever omitted attending
any funeral, which, indeed, was their chief exercise--these two were
among the sincerest mourners who followed the remains of the son of
their ancient friend to the grave.

"It is needless to tell of the executions that followed; how that the
candlery was sold by the mortgagee; how Orchis never got a penny for his
loan; and how, in the case of the poor widow, chastisement was tempered
with mercy; for, though she was left penniless, she was not left
childless. Yet, unmindful of the alleviation, a spirit of complaint, at
what she impatiently called the bitterness of her lot and the hardness
of the world, so preyed upon her, as ere long to hurry her from the
obscurity of indigence to the deeper shades of the tomb.

"But though the straits in which China Aster had left his family had,
besides apparently dimming the world's regard, likewise seemed to dim
its sense of the probity of its deceased head, and though this, as some
thought, did not speak well for the world, yet it happened in this case,
as in others, that, though the world may for a time seem insensible to
that merit which lies under a cloud, yet, sooner or later, it always
renders honor where honor is due; for, upon the death of the widow, the
freemen of Marietta, as a tribute of respect for China Aster, and an
expression of their conviction of his high moral worth, passed a
resolution, that, until they attained maturity, his children should be
considered the town's guests. No mere verbal compliment, like those of
some public bodies; for, on the same day, the orphans were officially
installed in that hospitable edifice where their worthy grandfather, the
town's guest before them, had breathed his last breath.

"But sometimes honor maybe paid to the memory of an honest man, and
still his mound remain without a monument. Not so, however, with the
candle-maker. At an early day, Plain Talk had procured a plain stone,
and was digesting in his mind what pithy