of associations,
was a single tear-drop. How well she remembered the time when she first
unpacked it for her young husband, and the white shirt bosoms showed
their snowy plaits! O dear, dear!

But women decant their affection, sweet and sound, out of the old
bottles into the new ones,--off from the lees of the past generation,
clear and bright, into the clean vessels just made ready to receive it.
Gifted Hopkins was his mother's idol, and no wonder. She had not only
the common attachment of a parent for him, as her offspring, but she
felt that her race was to be rendered illustrious by his genius, and
thought proudly of the time when some future biographer would mention
her own humble name, to be held in lasting remembrance as that of the
mother of Hopkins.

So she took great pains to equip this brilliant but inexperienced young
man with everything he could by any possibility need during his absence.
The great trunk filled itself until it bulged with its contents like a
boa-constrictor who has swallowed his blanket. Best clothes and common
clothes, thick clothes and thin clothes, flannels and linens, socks and
collars, with handkerchiefs enough to keep the pickpockets busy for a
week, with a paper of gingerbread and some lozenges for gastralgia, and
"hot drops," and ruled paper to write letters on, and a little Bible,
and a phial with _hiera picra_, and another with paregoric, and another
with "camphire" for sprains and bruises,--Gifted went forth equipped for
every climate from the tropic to the pole, and armed against every
malady from Ague to Zoster. He carried also the paternal watch, a solid
silver bull's-eye, and a large pocket-book, tied round with a long tape,
and, by way of precaution, pinned into his breast-pocket. He talked
about having a pistol, in case he were attacked by any of the ruffians
who are so numerous in the city, but Mr. Gridley told him, No! he would
certainly shoot himself, and he shouldn't think of letting him take a
pistol.

They went forth, Mentor and Telemachus, at the appointed time, to dare
the perils of the railroad and the snares of the city. Mrs. Hopkins was
firm up to near the last moment, when a little quiver in her voice set
her eyes off; and her face broke up all at once, so that she had to hide
it behind her handkerchief. Susan Posey showed the truthfulness of her
character in her words to Gifted at parting. "Farewell," she said, "and
think of me sometimes while absent. My hear