pediment in his speech also. His name--it is an odd one, but
you may perhaps have heard it--was Salmon.

He had been up long before day, making preparations for the journey. His
mother was up also, busily assisting him, though blind,--her intelligent
hands placing together the linen that was to remind him affectingly of
her, when unpacked in a distant city.

A singular hush was upon the little household, though all were so
active. The sisters moved about noiselessly by candle-light, their pale
cheeks and constrained lips betraying the repressed emotion. The early
breakfast was eaten in silence,--anxious eyes looking up now and then at
the clock. It was only when the hour for the starting of the stage
struck that all seemed suddenly to remember that there were a thousand
things to be said; and so the last moments were crowded with last words.

"Your blessing, mother!" said Salmon, (for we shall call the youth by
the youth's name,) bending before her with his heart chokingly full.

She rose up from her chair. Her right hand held his; the other was laid
lovingly over his neck. Her blind eyes were turned upward prayerfully,
and tears streamed from them as she spoke and blessed him. Then a last
embrace; and he hurried forth from the house, his checks still wet,--not
with his own tears.

The stage took him up. He climbed to the driver's seat. Then again the
dull clank of the lumbering coach-wheels was heard,--a heavy sound to
the mother's ears. In the dim, still light of the frosty morning he
turned and waved back his farewell to her who could not see, took his
last look at the faces at the door, and so departed from that home
forever. The past was left behind him, with all its dear associations;
and before him rose the future, chill, uncertain, yet not without gleams
of rosy brightness, like the dawn then breaking upon Monadnock's misty
head.

Thus went forth the young man into the world, seeking his fortune.
Conscious of power, courageous, shrinking from no hardship, palpitating
with young dreams, he felt that he had his place off yonder somewhere,
beneath that brightening sky, beyond those purple hills,--but where?

In due time he arrived in New York; but something within assured him
that here was not the field of his fortunes. So he went on to
Philadelphia. There he made a longer stop. He had a letter of
introduction to the Rev. Mr. ----, who received him with hospitality,
and used his influence to assist him in ga