kworth_, _The Stolen Child_, by "John Galt, Esq.";
_Rosine Laval_, by "Mr. Smith"; _Sermons and Essays_, by William Ellery
Channing. We found in the box, also, thirty numbers of the _United
States Magazine and Democratic Review_ and sundry copies of the _New
York Mirror_.

"Ayes! I declare! What do you think o' this, Peabody Baynes!" Aunt Deel
exclaimed as she sat turning the pages of a novel. "Ye know Aunt Minervy
used to say that a novel was a fast horse on the road to
perdition--ayes!"

"Well she wasn't--" Uncle Peabody began and stopped suddenly. What he
meant to say about her will never be definitely known. In half a moment
he added:

"I guess if Sue Wright recommends 'em they won't hurt us any."

"Ayes! I ain't afraid--we'll wade into 'em," she answered recklessly.
"Ayes! we'll see what they're about."

Aunt Deel began with _The Stolen Child_. She read slowly and often
paused for comment or explanation or laughter or to touch the corner of
an eye with a corner of her handkerchief in moments when we were all
deeply moved by the misfortunes of our favorite characters, which were
acute and numerous. Often she stopped to spell out phrases of French or
Latin, whereupon Uncle Peabody would exclaim:

"Call it 'snags' and go on."

The "snags" were numerous in certain of the books we read, in which case
Uncle Peabody would exclaim:

"Say, that's purty rough plowin'. Mebbe you better move into another
field."

How often I have heard Aunt Deel reading when the effect was like this:

"The Duchess exclaimed with an accent which betrayed the fact that she
had been reared in the French Capital: 'Snags!' Whereupon Sir Roger
rejoined in French equally patrician: 'Snags!"

Those days certain authors felt it necessary to prove that their
education had not been neglected or forgotten. Their way was strewn with
fragments of classic lore intended to awe and mystify the reader, while
evidences of correct religious sentiment were dropped, here and there,
to reassure him. The newspapers and magazines of the time, like certain
of its books, were salted with little advertisements of religion, and
virtue and honesty and thrift.

In those magazines we read of the great West--"the poor man's
paradise"--"the stoneless land of plenty"; of its delightful climate, of
the ease with which the farmer prospered on its rich soil. Uncle Peabody
spoke playfully of going West, after that, but Aunt Deel made no answer
and concealed her opin