ing a storm, and of the
manner in which these vestiges must have been lost; and a more complete
comprehension of the terrific scenes attendant on those disasters would
thereby be gained, together with a full conception of the horrors of the
catastrophe. Few of the present generation know that either of these
events have occurred: fewer still are aware of the pecuniary loss and
human suffering they involved."

CONSTANCE FENIMORE WOOLSON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

A FRIEND OF MY CHILDHOOD.

I suppose I must have pulled the bell very hard that day, for otherwise
I don't think she would have kept me waiting twenty minutes, as she did.
_She_ was only my mother's servant-woman, whose duty was to wait upon
the dinner-table and the door, the latter function being the more
onerous one. Looking back at my conduct over the lapse of eighteen
years, I am disposed to acknowledge that she was right in the abstract
in punishing the inconsiderate impatience which made me keep the
door-bell upon a continuous ring till I was let in. But how wrong did
the event prove her! Scarcely was I warmed up to my work, when, turning
my head, I saw a tall gentleman with broad shoulders and a round face,
whose look, at first one of inquiry, and perhaps bewilderment as he
tried to distinguish the house he was in search of from among a dozen,
all characterized by that unity of design which in Philadelphia strikes
forcibly the intelligent foreigner, suddenly changed to one of
amusement, not, I thought then, unmixed with approval, as he caught
sight of me at my reprehensible employment. And as I rang with a
persistency which nothing can now call from me, he stood on the bottom
step (for it was my mother whom he had come to see) with that expression
in which I found so little discouragement, still looking forth from
those great eyes of his, which had pierced deeply and sternly so many of
the false and hollow things of this world, and which now, not, I am
sure, for the first time, were bent kindly down upon a rude boy and his
ruder pranks. How little did the latter know about the tall gentleman,
and how little too would he have cared even if he had known all there
was to know about him:--known that then the age was beginning to
recognize its philosopher, whose lessons, sharp and bitter enough at
first, were to make it better and truer and purer, if such a thing were
possible of accomplishment.

But that he was tall I did know, and my standard of em