more than one young girl sent off to the asylum by that sort of
work, when, if I'd only had 'em, I'd have made 'em sweep the stairs, and
mix the puddin's, and tend the babies, and milk the cow, and keep 'em
too busy all day to be thinkin' about themselves, and have 'em dress up
nice evenin's and see some young folks and have a good time, and go to
meetin' Sundays, and then have done with the minister, unless it was
old Father Pemberton. He knows forty times as much about heaven as that
Stoker man does, or ever 's like to,--why don't they run after him, I
should like to know? Ministers are men, come now; and I don't want to
say anything against women, Mr. Gridley, but women are women, that's the
fact of it, and half of 'em are hystericky when they're young; and I've
heard old Dr. Hurlbut say many a time that he had to lay in an extra
stock of valerian and assafaetida whenever there was a young minister
round,--for there's plenty of religious ravin', says he, that's nothin'
but hysterics."

[Mr. Fronde thinks that was the trouble with Bloody Queen Mary, but the
old physician did not get the idea from him.]

"Well, and what do you propose to do about the Rev. Joseph Bellamy
Stoker and his young proselyte, Miss Myrtle Hazard?" said Mr. Gridley,
when Mrs. Hopkins at last gave him a chance to speak.

"Mr. Gridley,"--Mrs. Hopkins looked full upon him as she spoke,--"people
used to say that you was a good man and a great man and one of the
learnedest men alive, but that you didn't know much nor care for much
except books. I know you used to live pretty much to yourself when you
first came to board in this house. But you've been very good to my son;
... and if Gifted lives till you... till you are in... your grave... he
will write a poem--I know he will--that will tell your goodness to babes
unborn."

[Here Master Gridley groaned, and repeated to himself silently,

"Scindentur vestes gemmae frangentur et aurum,
Carmina quam tribuent fama perennis erit."

All this inwardly, and without interrupting the worthy woman's talk.]

"And if ever Gifted makes a book,--don't say anything about it, Mr.
Gridley, for goodness' sake, for he wouldn't have anybody know it, only
I can't help thinking that some time or other he will print a book,--and
if he does, I know whose name he'll put at the head of it,--'Dedicated
to B. G., with the gratitude and respect--' There, now, I had n't any
business to say a word about it, and it's