inted household, from that of
steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not cheerfully assume.
His round of work not consuming all his energies, he must needs cultivate
the Doctor's garden, which he kept in one perpetual bloom, from the
blowing of the first crocus to the fading of the last dahlia.

This garden was Abel's poem. Its half-dozen beds were so many cantos.
Nature crowded them for him with imagery such as no Laureate could copy
in the cold mosaic of language. The rhythm of alternating dawn and
sunset, the strophe and antistrophe still perceptible through all the
sudden shifts of our dithyrambic seasons and echoed in corresponding
floral harmonies, made melody in the soul of Abel, the plain serving-man.
It softened his whole otherwise rigid aspect. He worshipped God according
to the strict way of his fathers; but a florist's Puritanism is always
colored by the petals of his flowers,--and Nature never shows him a
black corolla.

He may or may not figure again in this narrative; but as there must be
some who confound the New England hired man, native-born, with the
servant of foreign birth, and as there is the difference of two
continents and two civilizations between them, it did not seem fair to
let Abel bring round the Doctor's mare and sulky without touching his
features in half-shadow into our background.

The Doctor's mare, Cassia, was so called by her master from her cinnamon
color, cassia being one of the professional names for that spice or drug.
She was of the shade we call sorrel, or, as an Englishman would perhaps
say, chestnut,--a genuine "Morgan" mare, with a low forehand, as is
common in this breed, but with strong quarters and flat hocks, well
ribbed up, with a good eye and a pair of lively ears,--a first-rate
doctor's beast, would stand until her harness dropped off her back at the
door of a tedious case, and trot over hill and dale thirty miles in three
hours, if there was a child in the next county with a bean in its
windpipe and the Doctor gave her a hint of the fact. Cassia was not
large, but she had a good deal of action, and was the Doctor's
show-horse. There were two other animals in his stable: Quassia or
Quashy, the black horse, and Caustic, the old bay, with whom he jogged
round the village.

"A long ride to-day?" said Abel, as he brought up the equipage.

"Just out of the village,--that 's all.--There 's a kink in her
mane,--pull it out, will you?"

"Goin' to visit so