act Society, and it was her intention to
pay a visit to her cousin, Royall Eastman, after she had discharged the
first and imperative duty she owed the society. Mrs. Deacon Ranney was
to have taken me and provided for my temporal and spiritual wants
during grandmother's absence, but at the last moment the deacon came
down with one of his spells of quinsy, and no other alternative
remained but to pack me off to Nashua, where my Uncle Cephas lived.

This involved considerable expense, for the stage fare was three
shillings each way: it came particularly hard on grandmother, inasmuch
as she had just paid her road tax and had not yet received her
semi-annual dividends on her Fitchburg Railway stock. Indifferent,
however, to every sense of extravagance and to all other considerations
except those of personal pride, I rode away atop of the stage-coach,
full of exultation. As we rattled past the Waite house I waved my cap
to Captivity and indulged in the pleasing hope that she would be
lonesome without me. Much of the satisfaction of going away arises
from the thought that those you leave behind are likely to be
wretchedly miserable during your absence.

My Uncle Cephas lived in a house so very different from my
grandmother's that it took me some time to get used to the place. Uncle
Cephas was a lawyer, and his style of living was not at all like
grandmother's; he was to have been a minister, but at twelve years of
age he attended the county fair, and that incident seemed to change the
whole bent of his life. At twenty-one he married Samantha Talbott, and
that was another blow to grandmother, who always declared that the
Talbotts were a shiftless lot. However, I was agreeably impressed with
Uncle Cephas and Aunt 'Manthy, for they welcomed me very cordially and
turned me over to my little cousins, Mary and Henry, and bade us three
make merry to the best of our ability. These first favorable
impressions of my uncle's family were confirmed when I discovered that
for supper we had hot biscuit and dried beef warmed up in cream gravy,
a diet which, with all due respect to grandmother, I considered much
more desirable than dry bread and dried-apple sauce.

Aha, old Crusoe! I see thee now in yonder case smiling out upon me as
cheerily as thou didst smile those many years ago when to a little boy
thou broughtest the message of Romance! And I do love thee still, and
I shall always love thee, not only for thy benefaction in t