upon him. The scene in court my uncle
thought peculiarly solemn and impressive. The candidate for the franchise
was strictly questioned by the presiding justice, in open court, with
regard to his origin and his past life. The witnesses were subjected to a
similar scrutiny as to his character and habits, and their judgment of
his fitness for the responsible position and the new duties he was about
to assume. When this part of the transaction was completed, the oaths of
renunciation of allegiance to every foreign power, prince, or potentate
whatsoever, and the oath to support the Constitution of the United States
were administered to him by the clerk in a manner to fix it in his mind
that it was a very serious business, indeed, in which he had just been
engaged. Thereupon, the judge addressed him in language of congratulation
and counsel, and our newly-made fellow-countryman respectfully departed
from the tribunal, conscious that he had attained no mean privilege and
had secured a safeguard, like that, by the declaration of which the
Apostle of the Gentiles stayed the uplifted hands of his persecutors, and
caused them to tremble at the thought of misuse or degradation inflicted
upon a Roman citizen. Now, I believe, whatever is left of the ceremony
upon such occasions is slurred over in a clerk's office, or the part
performed in court scarcely attracts the attention of the magistrate upon
the bench. The moral of this change of practice may be left to the
reflection of the judicious reader. But it was something then to be, or
to be made an American citizen.

Not long before this, there had been an earthquake, which, though of
brief duration, had caused no little alarm,--a terrific sound always,
however slight the shock,--and in this instance making houses tremble
and shaking down various articles from their places of deposit. In the
early days of the colony, these phenomena were not uncommon, and are said
to have been of no little power in this part of New England. Uncle
Richard described the recent one as rumbling under the frozen ground
leading to his barns, as if a line of heavily-loaded wagons had rolled
over it. Being something of a philosopher, and better educated than usual
at the time, he explained the cause of such physical occurrences to us
young ones.

"The fact is," he said, "the water in certain parts of the earth becomes
intensely heated and lets off a quantity of steam of amazing expansive
power. It is like