was calculated to leave a livelier impression than my former ones.
Meanwhile the tower of Saint Botolph's looked benignantly down; and I
fancied that it was bidding me farewell, as it did Mr. Cotton, two or
three hundred years ago, and telling me to describe its venerable height,
and the town beneath it, to the people of the American city, who are
partly akin, if not to the living inhabitants of Old Boston, yet to some
of the dust that lies in its churchyard.

One thing more. They have a Bunker Hill in the vicinity of their town; and
(what could hardly be expected of an English community) seem proud to
think that their neighborhood has given name to our first and most widely
celebrated and best-remembered battle-field.

* * * * *

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF A STRENGTH-SEEKER.

"There goes the smallest fellow in our class."

I was crossing one of the paths that intersect the college green of old
Harvard when this remark fell upon my ears. Looking up, I saw two stalwart
Freshmen on their way to recitation, one of whom had called the other's
attention to my humble self by this observation, reminding me of a
distinction which I did not covet.

It was not quite true. There was one, and only one, member of the class of
'54 who was as small as I. Some consolation, though not much, in that! But
the air of amused compassion with which the lusty Down-Easter, who had
made me feel what the _digito monstrari_ was, now looked down on me,
raised a feeling of resentment and self-depreciation which left me in no
mood to make a brilliant show of scholarship in construing my "Isocrates"
that morning.

"True, I am small, nay, diminutive," I soliloquized, as I wended my way
homeward under the classic umbrage of venerable elms. "But surely this is
no fault of mine.--Hold there! Are you quite sure it's no fault of yours?
Are we not responsible to a much greater extent than we imagine for our
physical condition? After making all abatement for insurmountable
hereditary influences upon organization,--after granting to that
remorseless law of genealogical transmission its proper weight,--after
admitting the seemingly capricious facts of what the modern French
physiologists call _atavism_, under which we are made drunkards or
consumptives, lunatics or wise men, short or tall, because of certain
dominant traits in some remote ancestor,--after conceding all this, does
not Nature leave it largely in ou