f the day, he hitched his horse and quietly entered the
building. It proved to be a Quaker meeting, and perfect silence
prevailed. At length tiring of this state of things, Mr. King arose and
began to address the assembly upon topics suitable to the day. He was an
uncommonly handsome young man, and then and ever afterwards distinguished
for extraordinary powers of eloquence. The Quakers listened with mute
amazement and admiration to the discourse of some twenty minutes'
duration, when the speaker slipped out, remounted, and proceeded on his
journey. The incident was the occasion of great and mysterious interest,
for a long time afterwards, in the quiet country neighborhood. No
imagination could conceive who the wonderful speaker might be, and many
insisted it must have been, indeed, "an angel from heaven." Some years
afterwards, at the session of a Constitutional Convention in
Massachusetts, Mr. King rose to make a motion. He had no sooner begun,
than a Quaker member started up from a back seat, and, carried away by
the first glimpse at solution of the long-standing mystery, cried out,
"That's the man that spoke in our meetin'."

Provision for the instruction of youth was liberal, and not long
previously the most famous, and I believe the longest established
academy of the day, flourished in the immediate neighborhood, in all
its glory. Of the school-books then in use, I cannot but think that
one in particular, Murray's English Reader, was a better manual than any
other which has since been produced. For it was mainly made up of extracts
from the writings of the best authors, in the best age of English
literature, and I can answer that its lessons were calculated to make
impressions on the youthful mind, never to be forgotten. But the
prevalent idea, of late years, seems to have been to nationalize
school-books, so as to narrow their teachings, and thus to make our
future fellow-citizens partisans instead of men. But literature and
learning are confined to no age or nation; and meaning in no sense to
say a word which could abate the ardor of manly patriotism in any
bosom, it is certain that much is to be learned from the history of
other people beside our own; and I suppose there are standards of high
intellectual attainment in the past,--in poetry and eloquence, and
various ranges of thought and expression,--which never have been and
are not likely to be surpassed. The deluge of modern transitory
literature had not the