les,
bedsteads, bits of carpet, and stoves.

"What's the matter?" he called out from his wagon. "There ain't nothin'
the matter," said Alcestis Crambry. "Father's dead, an we're dividin' up
the furnerchure."

Alcestis was the pride of the Crambrys, and the list of his attainments
used often to be on his proud father's lips. It was he who was the
largest, "for his size," in the family; he who could tell his brothers
Paul and Arcadus "by their looks;" he who knew a sour apple from a sweet
one the minute he bit it; he who, at the early age of ten, was bright
enough to point to the cupboard and say, "Puddin', dad!"

Alcestis had enjoyed, in consequence of his unusual intellectual powers,
some educational privileges, and the Killick schoolmistress well
remembered his first day at the village seat of learning. Reports of
what took place in this classic temple from day to day may have been
wafted to the dull ears of the boy, who was not thought ready for school
until he had attained the ripe age of twelve. It may even have been
that specific rumors of the signs, symbols, and hieroglyphics used in
educational institutions had reached him in the obscurity of his
cranberry meadows. At all events, when confronted by the alphabet chart,
whose huge black capitals were intended to capture the wandering eyes of
the infant class, Alcestis exhibited unusual, almost unnatural,
excitement.

"That is 'A,' my boy," said the teacher genially, as she pointed to the
first character on the chart.

"Good God, is that 'A'!" exclaimed Alcestis, sitting down heavily on
the nearest bench. And neither teacher nor scholars could discover
whether he was agreeably surprised or disappointed in the
letter,--whether he had expected, if he ever encountered it, to find it
writhing in coils on the floor of a cage, or whether it simply bore no
resemblance to the ideal already established in his mind.

Mrs. Wiley had once tried to make something of Mercy, the oldest
daughter of the family, but at the end of six weeks she announced that a
girl who couldn't tell whether the clock was going "forrards or
backwards," and who rubbed a pocket handkerchief as long as she did a
sheet, would be no help in her household.

The Crambrys had daily walked the five or six miles from their home to
the Edgewood bridge during the progress of the drive, not only for the
social and intellectual advantages to be gained from the company
present, but for the more solid compen