rs and
vegetables. I frequently walked with him about the town, showing and
explaining to him the great changes that had taken place since the
former times in which he had lived. But he was not impressed by these
things as I expected him to be.

"It seems to me," he said, "as though I were in a foreign country, and I
look upon what lies about me as if everything had always been as I see
it. This town is so different from anything I have ever known that I
cannot imagine it has changed from a condition which was once familiar
to me. At Bixbury, however, I think the case will be otherwise. If there
are changes there I shall notice them. In a little place like that,
however, I have hopes that the changes will not be great."

He was very conservative, and I could see that in many cases he thought
the old ways of doing things much better than the new ones. He was,
however, a polite and sensible man, and knew better than to make
criticisms to one who had befriended him; but in some cases he could not
conceal his disapprobation. He had seen a train of cars before I met
him, and I was not able to induce him to approach again a railroad
track. Whatever other feelings he may have had at first sight of a train
in motion were entirely swallowed up in his abhorrence of this mode of
travelling.

"We must not be in a hurry," said my wife when we talked of these
matters. "When he gets more accustomed to these things he will be more
surprised at them."

There were some changes, however, which truly did astonish him, and
these were the alterations--in his opinion entirely uncalled for and
unwarrantable--which had been made in the spelling of the words of our
language since he had gone to school. No steam-engine, no application of
electricity, none of the modern inventions which I showed him, caused
him the emotions of amazement which were occasioned by the information
that in this country "honor" was now spelled without a u.

During this time Mr. Kilbright's interest in his grandson seemed to be
on the increase. He would frequently walk past the house of that old
gentleman merely for the purpose of looking at him as he sat by the open
window reading his newspaper or quietly smoking his evening pipe on a
bench in his side yard. When he had been with me about ten days he said:
"I now feel that I must go and make myself known to my grandson. I am
earning my own subsistence; and, however he may look upon me, he need
not fear that I am c