e the names belonging to childhood
and infancy in their solemn record, the generation which docks its
Christian names in such an un-Christian way will bequeath whole
churchyards full of riddles to posterity. How it will puzzle and
distress the historians and antiquarians of a coming generation to
settle what was the real name of Dan and Bert and Billy, which last is
legible on a white marble slab, raised in memory of a grown person, in a
certain burial-ground in a town in Essex County, Massachusetts!

But in the mean time we are forgetting the letter directed to Mr. Frank
Mayfield.

"DEAR FRANK,--Hooray! Hurrah! Rah!

"I have made the acquaintance of 'The Mysterious Stranger'! It happened
by a queer sort of accident, which came pretty near relieving you of
the duty of replying to this letter. I was out in my little boat, which
carries a sail too big for her, as I know and ought to have remembered.
One of those fitful flaws of wind to which the lake is so liable struck
the sail suddenly, and over went my boat. My feet got tangled in the
sheet somehow, and I could not get free. I had hard work to keep my head
above water, and I struggled desperately to escape from my toils; for if
the boat were to go down I should be dragged down with her. I thought
of a good many things in the course of some four or five minutes, I can
tell you, and I got a lesson about time better than anything Kant and
all the rest of them have to say of it. After I had been there about an
ordinary lifetime, I saw a white canoe making toward me, and I knew that
our shy young gentleman was coming to help me, and that we should become
acquainted without an introduction. So it was, sure enough. He saw what
the trouble was, managed to disentangle my feet without drowning me in
the process or upsetting his little flimsy craft, and, as I was somewhat
tired with my struggle, took me in tow and carried me to the landing
where he kept his canoe. I can't say that there is anything odd about
his manners or his way of talk. I judge him to be a native of one of our
Northern States,--perhaps a New Englander. He has lived abroad during
some parts of his life. He is not an artist, as it was at one time
thought he might be. He is a good-looking fellow, well developed, manly
in appearance, with nothing to excite special remark unless it be a
certain look of anxiety or apprehension which comes over him from time
to time. You remember our old friend Squire B., whose com