beaten path, her
extraordinary ear and good visual memory kept her from many or flagrant
mistakes. It was her intention, especially when saying her prayers at
night, to look up all doubtful words in her small dictionary, before
copying her Thoughts into the sacred book for the inspiration
of posterity; but when genius burned with a brilliant flame, and
particularly when she was in the barn and the dictionary in the house,
impulse as usual carried the day.

There sits Rebecca, then, in the open door of the Sawyers barn
chamber--the sunset door. How many a time had her grandfather, the good
deacon, sat just underneath in his tipped-back chair, when Mrs. Israel's
temper was uncertain, and the serenity of the barn was in comforting
contrast to his own fireside!

The open doors swinging out to the peaceful landscape, the solace of the
pipe, not allowed in the "settin'-room"--how beautifully these simple
agents have ministered to the family peace in days agone! "If I hadn't
had my barn and my store BOTH, I couldn't never have lived in holy
matrimony with Maryliza!" once said Mr. Watson feelingly.

But the deacon, looking on his waving grass fields, his tasseling corn
and his timber lands, bright and honest as were his eyes, never saw
such visions as Rebecca. The child, transplanted from her home farm at
Sunnybrook, from the care of the overworked but easy-going mother, and
the companionship of the scantily fed, scantily clothed, happy-go-lucky
brothers and sisters--she had indeed fallen on shady days in Riverboro.
The blinds were closed in every room of the house but two, and the same
might have been said of Miss Miranda's mind and heart, though Miss
Jane had a few windows opening to the sun, and Rebecca already had her
unconscious hand on several others. Brickhouse rules were rigid and many
for a little creature so full of life, but Rebecca's gay spirit could
not be pinioned in a strait jacket for long at a time; it escaped
somehow and winged its merry way into the sunshine and free air; if she
were not allowed to sing in the orchard, like the wild bird she was, she
could still sing in the cage, like the canary.

II

If you had opened the carefully guarded volume with the mottled covers,
you would first have seen a wonderful title page, constructed apparently
on the same lines as an obituary, or the inscription on a tombstone,
save for the quantity and variety of information contained in it. Much
of the matter would se