ctions to belief in the usefulness of
spiritualistic mystery,--in fact, by temperament, perhaps inclining to
hope that such phenomena may be tamed and yoked, and made to work for
human happiness,--yet there seems to be something about me which these
agencies do not find congenial. Though I have gone longing for a sign,
no sign has been given me. Though I have been always ready to believe
all other people's mysteries, no inexplicable facts have honored my
experience.

The only personal prophecy ever strictly fulfilled in my life was--I
am not certain whether I ought to feel embarrassed in alluding to
it--made by a gipsy fortune-teller. She was young and pretty, the
seventh child of a seventh child, and she lived in a Massachusetts
shoe-town by the name of Lynn. And what was it? Oh, but you must
excuse me.

The grandfather to whom these marvels happened was not, as I say, a
literary man; yet even he did write a little book--a religious tale,
or tract, after the manner of his day and profession; and it took to
itself a circulation of two hundred thousand copies. I remember how
Mr. James T. Fields laughed when he heard of it--that merry laugh
peculiar to himself.

"You can't help it," the publisher said; "you come of a family of
large circulations."

One day I was at school with my brother,--a little, private school,
down by what were called the English dormitories in Andover.

I was eight years old. Some one came in and whispered to the teacher.
Her face turned very grave, and she came up to us quietly, and called
us out into the entry, and gently put on our things.

"You are to go home," she said; "your mother is dead." I took my
little brother's hand without a word, and we trudged off. I do not
think we spoke--I am sure we did not cry--on the way home. I remember
perfectly that we were very gayly dressed. Our mother liked bright,
almost barbaric colors on children. The little boy's coat was of red
broadcloth, and my cape of a canary yellow, dyed at home in white-oak
dye. The two colors flared before my eyes as we shuffled along and
crushed the crisp, dead leaves that were tossing in the autumn wind
all over Andover Hill.

When we got home they told us it was a mistake; she was not dead; and
we were sent back to school. But, in a few weeks after that, one day
we were told we need not go to school at all; the red and yellow coats
came off, and little black ones took their places. The new baby, in
his haggard fath