e excursions,
in an earlier part of his life, on the River Congo, or that he was
familiar with the soundings of Loango Bay. As he returned from his
voyages, bringing more and more money, he enlarged his estate, and
grew more and more respectable, retiring at last from the sea, to
become a worthy landsman; he paid taxes to church and state, and
even had a silver communion cup, among the pewter service used on
the occasion of the Lord's Supper; but he never was brought to
the approval of that project of the Congregational Churches,--the
colonization of the Blacks to Liberia. Neither was Hersila Allen aware
that the pink calico in which I first saw her was remotely owing to
West India Rum. Nor did Charlotte Alden, the proudest girl in school,
know that her grandfather's, Squire Alden's, stepping-stone to
fortune was the loss of the brig _Capricorn_, which was wrecked in
the vicinity of a comfortable port, on her passage out to the
whaling-ground. An auger had been added to the meager outfit, and long
after the sea had leaked through the hole bored through her bottom,
and swallowed her, and the insurance had been paid, the truth leaked
out that the captain had received instructions, which had been
fulfilled. Whereupon two Insurance Companies went to law with him, and
a suit ensued, which ended in their paying costs, in addition to what
they had before paid Squire Alden, who winked in a derisive manner at
the Board of Directors when he received its check.

There were others who belonged in the category of Decayed Families,
as exclusive as they were shabby. There were parvenus, which included
myself. When I entered the school it was divided into clans, each
with its spites, jealousies, and emulations. Its _esprit de corps_,
however, was developed by my arrival; the girls united against me, and
though I perceived, when I compared myself with them, that they were
partly right in their opinions, their ridicule stupefied and crushed
me. They were trained, intelligent, and adroit; I uncouth, ignorant,
and without tact. It was impossible for Miss Black not to be affected
by the general feeling in regard to me. Her pupils knew sooner than I
that she sympathized with them. She embarrassed me, when I should have
despised her. At first her regimen surprised, then filled me with a
dumb, clouded anger, which made me appear apathetic.

Miss Emily Black was a young woman, and, I thought, a handsome one.
She had crenelated black hair, lar