aining a peculiar relation, not only
to me, but to one another; I thought they were in love, if not to be
married. But they never were married, nor ever thought of it, I suppose.
All that drama was wrought out in the bosom of a child. It is
worth noticing, too, the freedom with sacred things, of those days,
approaching to the old fetes and mysteries in the church. We are apt to
think of the Puritan times as all rigor and strictness. And yet here,
nearly sixty years ago, was a play acted in the meeting-house: the
church turned into a theatre. And I remember my mother's telling me that
when she was a girl her father carried her on a pillion to the raising
of a church in Pittsfield; and the occasion was celebrated by a ball
in the evening. Now, all dancing is proscribed by the church there as a
sinful amusement.

[FN This was the reason why Mr. Dewey gave to the country home which
he inherited from his father the name of "St. David's," by which it is
known to his family and friends.--M. E. D.]

The next thing that I remember, as an event in my childhood, was the
funeral of General Ashley, one of our townsmen, who had served as
colonel, I think, in the War of the Revolution. I was then in my
sixth year. It was a military funeral; and the procession, for a long
distance, filled the wide street. The music, the solemn march, the bier
borne in the midst, the crowd! It seemed to me as if the whole world was
at a funeral. The remains of Bonaparte borne to the Invalides amidst the
crowds of Paris could not, [14] I suppose, at a later day, have affected
me like that spectacle. I do not certainly know whether I heard the
sermon on the occasion by the pastor, the Rev. Ephraim Judson; but at
any rate it was so represented to me that it always seems as if I had
heard it, especially the apostrophe to the remains that rested beneath
that dark pall in the aisle. "General Ashley!" he said, and repeated,
"General Ashley!--he hears not."

To the recollections of my childhood this old pastor presents a very
distinct, and I may say somewhat portentous, figure, tall, large-limbed,
pale, ghostly almost, with slow movement and hollow tone, with eyes
dreamy, and kindly, I believe, but spectral to me, coming into the house
with a heavy, deliberate, and solemn step, making me feel as if the very
chairs and tables were conscious of his presence and did him reverence;
and when he stretched out his long, bony arm and said, "Come here,
child!" I felt