as the governor's children, or the minister's. If Mr.
Gridley would be so good as to find her some kind of a real handsome
Chris'n name for 'em, she'd provide 'em with the other one. Hopkinses
they shall be bred and taught, and Hopkinses they shall be called. Ef
their father and mother was ashamed to own 'em, she was n't. Couldn't
Mr. Gridley pick out some pooty sounding names from some of them great
books of his. It's jest as well to have 'em pooty as long as they don't
cost any more than if they was Tom and Sally.

A grim smile passed over the rugged features of Byles Gridley. "Nothing
is easier than that, Mrs. Hopkins," he said. "I will give you two very
pretty names that I think will please you and other folks. They're new
names, too. If they shouldn't like to keep them, they can change them
before they're christened, if they ever are. Isosceles will be just the
name for the boy, and I'm sure you won't find a prettier name for the
girl in a hurry than Helminthia."

Mrs. Hopkins was delighted with the dignity and novelty of these two
names, which were forthwith adopted. As they were rather long for common
use in the family, they were shortened into the easier forms of Sossy and
Minthy, under which designation the babes began very soon to thrive
mightily, turning bread and milk into the substance of little sinners at
a great rate, and growing as if they were put out at compound interest.

This short episode shows us the family conditions surrounding Byles
Gridley, who, as we were saying, had just been called down to tea by Miss
Susan Posey.

"I am coming, my dear," he said,--which expression quite touched Miss
Susan, who did not know that it was a kind of transferred caress from the
delicious page he was reading. It was not the living child that was
kissed, but the dead one lying under the snow, if we may make a trivial
use of a very sweet and tender thought we all remember.

Not long after this, happening to call in at the lawyer's office, his eye
was caught by the corner of a book lying covered up by a pile of papers.
Somehow or other it seemed to look very natural to him. Could that be a
copy of "Thoughts on the Universe"? He watched his opportunity, and got
a hurried sight of the volume. His own treatise, sure enough! Leaves
Uncut. Opened of itself to the one hundred and twentieth page. The
axiom Murray Bradshaw had quoted--he did not remember from
what,--"sounded like Coleridge"--was staring hi