grim, under a pack made of an old bed-
sacking, stuffed out into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair
of small, meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from
under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That "man with the pack"
always inspired me with awe and reverence. Huge, almost sublime, in its
tense rotundity, the father of all packs, never laid aside and never
opened, what might there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping
curiosity I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half
expecting to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of it, like
robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers--half pedler, half
mendicant--who were in the habit of visiting us. One we recollect, a
lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed, unwholesome fellow, with his basket of
old newspapers and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
rather as a walking staff than as a protection from the rain. He told
us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring into the cause of his
lameness, that when a young man he was employed on the farm of the chief
magistrate of a neighboring State; where, as his ill-luck would have it,
the governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He was caught
one day in the young lady's room by her father; whereupon the irascible
old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously out of the window, laming him
for life, on the brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of
Lemnos. As for the lady, he assured us "she took on dreadfully about
it." "Did she die?" we inquired anxiously. There was a cun-ing
twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded, "Well, no, she did n't.
She got married."

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were honored with a
call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of verses, pedler and poet, physician
and parson,--a Yankee troubadour,--first and last minstrel of the valley
of the Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the very
nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins, needles, tape, and
cotton-thread for my mother; jack-knives, razors, and soap for my
father; and verses of his own composing, coarsely printed and
illustrated with rude wood-cuts, for the delectation of the younger
branches of the family. No lovesick youth could drown himself, no
deserted maiden bewail the moon, no rogu