gerund or a cosine. Master Gridley not only knew a good
deal of human nature, but he knew how to keep his knowledge to himself
upon occasion. He understood singularly well the ways and tendencies
of young people. He was shrewd in the detection of trickery, and very
confident in those who had once passed the ordeal of his well-schooled
observing powers. He had no particular tendency to meddle with the
personal relations of those about him; but if they were forced upon him
in any way, he was like to see into them at least as quickly as any of
his neighbors who thought themselves most endowed with practical skill.

In leaving the duties of his office he considered himself, as he said
a little despondently, like an old horse unharnessed and turned out to
pasture. He felt that he had separated himself from human interests, and
was henceforth to live in his books with the dead, until he should be
numbered with them himself. He had chosen this quiet village as a
place where he might pass his days undisturbed, and find a peaceful
resting-place in its churchyard, where the gravel was dry, and the
sun lay warm, and the glowing woods of autumn would spread their
many-colored counterpane over the bed where he would be taking his rest.
It sometimes came over him painfully that he was never more to be of any
importance to his fellow-creatures. There was nobody living to whom he
was connected by any very near ties. He felt kindly enough to the good
woman in whose house he lived; he sometimes gave a few words of counsel
to her son; he was not unamiable with the few people he met; he bowed
with great consideration to the Rev. Dr. Pemberton; and he studied with
no small interest the physiognomy of the Rev. Joseph Bellamy Stoker,
to whose sermons he listened, with a black scowl now and then, and a
nostril dilating with ominous intensity of meaning. But he said sadly to
himself, that his life had been a failure,--that he had nothing to show
for it, and his one talent was ready in its napkin to give back to his
Lord.

He owed something of this sadness, perhaps, to a cause which many would
hold of small significance. Though he had mourned for no lost love,
at least so far as was known, though he had never suffered the pang
of parting with a child, though he seemed isolated from those joys and
griefs which come with the ties of family, he too had his private urn
filled with the ashes of extinguished hopes. He was the father of a dead
book.