I'm young and I need starting right;
don't you think so?"

We all laughed at this, and my father looked with fondness at his boy,
as he answered:

"Ben, it shall be, and a week from next Sabbath, the day, if nothing
happens."

I believe it was a relief to my father, this hope that there might be
something more beautiful beyond than he had dared to dream; and Clara
was absorbed with the prospect of his getting hold of the truth, which,
though unnamed by her, had always been, it seemed, her firm belief. She
said nothing to me of what had occurred, and the days wore on until the
morning came when Louis said "good-bye," and left us for school.

Directly after his departure, Aunt Phebe (mother's sister) wrote us she
was coming to visit us for a few days. Of this I was glad, and I
rehearsed to Clara her virtues, told her of her early years, the sorrows
which she had borne, the working early and late to maintain the little
family of four children (for at the age of twenty-eight she was left
widowed and alone in a strange city). Her native town was not far
distant from the one in which we lived, and when she came I expected a
treat, for together these two sisters unshrouded the past, took off the
veil of years that covered their faces, and walked back, hand in hand,
to their childhood--its years, its loves, its friends, its home--and it
was never an old tale to me.

I loved to hear of grandfather Lewis, who went as minister's waiter in
the War of Seventy-six, going with old Minister Roxford, whose name has
been, and is still to be handed down through generations as a good old
man of Connecticut. Grandfather was only sixteen years at that time, and
though he saw no hard service, but was dressed up in ruffled shirt,
etc., received through life a pension of ninety-six dollars per year,
having enlisted for a period of six months, whereas some of his friends,
who saw hard service, and came out of the contest maimed for life,
received nothing.

Grandfather was of French extraction, and he boasted largely of this,
but I could not feel very proud of the fact that he traded with the
British, carrying to them hams, dried beef, poultry, and anything in
shape of edibles, receiving in return beautiful silk stockings, bandanna
handkerchiefs, and the tea that the old ladies were so glad to get.
Several times he was nearly captured, and once thrust into a stone wall,
in the town of Stratford, a quantity of silk stockings, with which his