To be sure, there was a difference in our individual
views as to how this should be achieved, but we were all agreed as to
what the result should be.

"I can laugh over those days now, Ned; but they were really happy while
they lasted. We were the salt of the earth; we were lifted above those
grovelling instincts which we saw manifested in the lives of others.
Each contributed his share of gas to inflate the painted balloon to
which we all clung, in the expectation that it would presently soar
with us to the stars. But it only went up over the out-houses, dodged
backwards and forwards two or three times, and finally flopped down with
us into a swamp."

"And that balloon was the A. C.?" suggested Mr. Johnson.

"As President of this Chapter, I prohibit questions," said Eunice. "And,
Enos, don't send up your balloon until the proper time. Don't anticipate
the programme, or the performance will be spoiled."

"I had almost forgotten that Ned is so much in the dark," her obedient
husband answered. "You can have but a slight notion," he continued,
turning to his friend, "of the extent to which this sentimental, or
transcendental, element in the little circle at Shelldrake's increased
after you left Norridgeport. We read the 'Dial,' and Emerson; we
believed in Alcott as the 'purple Plato' of modern times; we took
psychological works out of the library, and would listen for hours to
Hollins while he read Schelling or Fichte, and then go home with a
misty impression of having imbibed infinite wisdom. It was, perhaps,
a natural, though very eccentric rebound from the hard, practical,
unimaginative New-England mind which surrounded us; yet I look back upon
it with a kind of wonder. I was then, as you know, unformed mentally,
and might have been so still, but for the experiences of the A. C."

Mr. Johnson shifted his position, a little impatiently. Eunice looked at
him with laughing eyes, and shook her finger with a mock threat.

"Shelldrake," continued Mr. Billings, without noticing this by-play,
"was a man of more pretence than real cultivation, as I afterwards
discovered. He was in good circumstances, and always glad to receive us
at his house, as this made him, virtually, the chief of our tribe,
and the outlay for refreshments involved only the apples from his
own orchard and water from his well. There was an entire absence of
conventionality at our meetings, and this, compared with the somewhat
stiff society of the villag