dents to her house on Saturday afternoons and praying with and for
them. Bodily exercise was not, however, entirely superseded by spiritual
exercises, and a rudimentary form of base-ball and the heroic sport of
football were followed with some spirit.

A slight immature boy finds his materials of though and enjoyment in
very shallow and simple sources. Yet a kind of romance gilds for me the
sober tableland of that cold New England hill where I came in contact
with a world so strange to me, and destined to leave such mingled and
lasting impressions. I looked across the valley to the hillside where
Methuen hung suspended, and dreamed of its wooded seclusion as a village
paradise. I tripped lightly down the long northern slope with facilis
descensus on my lips, and toiled up again, repeating sed revocare
gradum. I wandered' in the autumnal woods that crown the "Indian Ridge,"
much wondering at that vast embankment, which we young philosophers
believed with the vulgar to be of aboriginal workmanship, not less
curious, perhaps, since we call it an escar, and refer it to alluvial
agencies. The little Shawshine was our swimming-school, and the great
Merrimack, the right arm of four toiling cities, was within reach of
a morning stroll. At home we had the small imp to make us laugh at his
enormities, for he spared nothing in his talk, and was the drollest
little living protest against the prevailing solemnities of the
locality. It did not take much to please us, I suspect, and it is a
blessing that this is apt to be so with young people. What else could
have made us think it great sport to leave our warm beds in the middle
of winter and "camp out,"--on the floor of our room,--with blankets
disposed tent-wise, except the fact that to a boy a new discomfort in
place of an old comfort is often a luxury.

More exciting occupation than any of these was to watch one of the
preceptors to see if he would not drop dead while he was praying. He had
a dream one night that he should, and looked upon it as a warning, and
told it round very seriously, and asked the boys to come and visit him
in turn, as one whom they were soon to lose. More than one boy kept his
eye on him during his public devotions, possessed by the same feeling
the man had who followed Van Amburgh about with the expectation, let us
not say the hope, of seeing the lion bite his head off sooner or later.

Let me not forget to recall the interesting visit to Haverhill with m