g, steadfast "soul of Rachel Lowe." I say
still, therefore, that we have had a good time, for we have loved one
another all our lives. And we have never been too much alone. Plenty of
friends have been glad to come and see us; and on Anniversary Week we
have usually made a journey to Boston, to wear off the rust, and get
stirred up generally. We attend most frequently the Anti-Slavery
Conventions. I know of no better place, whether for getting stirred up,
or wearing off the rust. That couple whom you may have noticed
sitting near the platform--that bald-headed old gentleman and
intelligent-looking elderly lady--are my wife and I. We met with the
early Abolitionists in a stable; we saw Garrison dragged through the
streets, and heard Phillips's first speech in Faneuil Hall.

I have always kept my old habit of watching pretty faces; only I don't
look sideways now: for the girls never think that an old man cares to
see them; but he does. We have one son, who Fanny devoutly hopes will
turn out better than his father. May he go through life as happily! And
he is in a fair way for it. I like to see him with Jenny, the pretty
daughter of my friend the watchmaker. If my good friend thinks to keep
always with him that youngest one of his flock, he will find his
mistake; for it was only yesterday that I saw them sitting together on
the seat in the low-branching apple-tree.

* * * * *

PICTOR IGNOTUS.

Human nature is impatient of mysteries. The occurrence of an event out
of the line of common causation, the advent of a person not plastic to
the common moulds of society, causes a great commotion in this little
ant-hill of ours. There is perplexity, bewilderment, a running hither
and thither, until the foreign substance is assigned a place in the
ranks; and if there be no rank to which it can be ascertained to belong,
a new rank shall be created to receive it, rather than that it shall be
left to roam up and down, baffling, defiant, and alone. Indeed, so great
is our abhorrence of outlying, unclassified facts, that we are often
ready to accept classification for explanation; and having given our
mystery a niche and a name, we cease any longer to look upon it as
mysterious. The village-schoolmaster, who displayed his superior
knowledge to the rustics gazing at an eclipse of the sun by assuring
them that it was "only a phenomenon," was but one of a great host of
wiseacres who stand ready with brush