e doors
in that house had a short-waisted effect with little panels above and
long panels below. I had a chamber so clean and small that I called it
in my mind the Monk's Cell, nearly filled with the high posted bed, the
austere table and chairs. The whitewashed walls were bare of pictures,
except a painted portrait of Stephen Williams, pastor of Longmeadow from
1718 to 1783. Daily his laughing eyes watched me as if he found my
pretensions a great joke. He had a long nose, and a high forehead. His
black hair crinkled, and a merry crease drew its half circle from one
cheek around under his chin to the other.

Longmeadow did not receive me without much question and debate. There
were Williamses in every direction; disguised, perhaps, for that
generation, under the names of Cooley, Stebbins, Colter, Ely, Hole, and
so on. A stately Sarah Williams, as Mrs. Storrs, sat at the head of the
pastor's table. Her disapproval was a force, though it never manifested
itself except in withdrawal. If Mrs. Storrs had drawn back from me while
I lived under her roof, I should have felt an outcast indeed. The subtle
refinement of those Longmeadow women was like the hinted sweetness of
arbutus flower. Breeding passed from generation to generation. They had
not mixed their blood with the blood of any outsiders; and their
forbears were English yeomen.

I threw myself into books as I had done during my first months at De
Chaumont's, before I grew to think of Madame de Ferrier. One of those
seven years I spent at Dartmouth. But the greater part of my knowledge I
owe to Pastor Storrs. Greek and Hebrew he gave me to add to the
languages I was beginning to own; and he unlocked all his accumulations
of learning. It was a monk's life that I lived; austere and without
incident, but bracing as the air of the hills. The whole system was
monastic, though abomination alighted on that word in Longmeadow. I took
the discipline into my blood. It will go down to those after me.

There a man had to walk with God whether he wanted to or not.

Living was inexpensive, each item being gaged by careful housekeeping.
It was a sin to gorge the body, and godly conversation was better than
abundance. Yet the pastor's tea-table arises with a halo around it. The
rye and Indian bread, the doughnuts fragrant as flowers, the sparing
tea, the prim mats which saved the cloth, the wire screen covering
sponge cake--how sacred they seem!

The autumn that I came to Longmeado