uch as he was loved by the villagers, he was no less respected. They
did not even know his name. Many would have been glad to, and wearied
themselves by indirect methods to find it out. But as no one had courage
to ask him, and as it never happened to fall from him incidentally, they
remained in the dark about it. He was known and addressed however, by the
appellation of 'the Lawyer,' as their conversation with him was chiefly
asking his advice on points of law too knotty for them, which he freely
gave. He affected no mystery or reserve; yet there was something in his
bearing, affable and unaristocratic as it was, that caused those very
men--who, if the governor of the state had come among them, would have
slapped him on the back, and offered him a glass of liquor--to rise in his
presence and approach him with respect.

My bright-eyed informant, with her musical voice, recollected, a good
while ago, when she was about ten years old, and he had become gray and
wrinkled--though he never needed a staff, nor was his eye dim--that he
rowed over one spring afternoon, and requested the men to leave their work
for a few minutes, and hear something that he had to say to them.
Accordingly, they collected 'considerable of a little crowd' around her
father's store. The lawyer stood in the door, while she made her way
through the throng and sat down on the door-step, at his feet. She did not
remember all that he said; only that he talked to them for about half an
hour, in a calm, conversational tone, on the importance of building
school-houses and educating their children. They seemed to be much pleased
with what he said; and after another half hour's free discussion, the
whole village turned out, and went to work felling trees and hewing
timber; and in the course of a few days a substantial school-house was
erected. From that time forth, she and all her brothers and sisters, and
all her play-mates, at stated hours and seasons, were rigidly imprisoned
therein, and diligently instructed in the rudiments of science.

About this time, she and a brother who was about two years older embarked
on a voyage of discovery. They pulled up the river, at least he did, for
she only held the rudder, two miles, till they come in sight of the
residence of the Great Unknown. There stood the old house, as she had
often gazed at it with wondering eyes from the opposite bank, just as
grim, and dark, and gloomy. It had been their intention to make an open