his arctic
home, and when the first harbingers of spring appeared, singing the
memorial songs of the Resurrection, the old country fever, inherited
from many generations of farmer ancestors, seized me, and we bought a
small plantation for $4,200, in N----, Mass., to which we moved April
28, 1887. Here, as usual, much money was expended on improvements and
for horse, carriages, cow, pigs, hens, also for scanty harvests of
vegetables, and our only returns therefor consisted of large crops
of backaches, nasal hemorrhages, and rheumatism incurred in frantic
attempts to coax from the reluctant soil, some slight compensation for
excessive labor.

Here, as usual, I was busied with many cares, lecturing in various
places on the subject of Florida and selling our private lands in that
state. Like Mr. Pickwick, I was founder of many societies, notably the
N---- club, which, with a fine orchestra and much dramatic talent
soon became the social and literary attraction of the town; also the
Republican club, which conducted a vigorous campaign for protective
tariff and sound money, attracting large audiences by political
debates. I was president of both these flourishing organizations, was
chairman of the parish committee of the Unitarian Church, leading
to its enlargement and extended usefulness, was a member of the
congressional committee of the district which wrested a congressman
from the Democrats, electing, after a desperate struggle, John W.
Candler, to the National Legislature in place of Russell, "the
sheepless Shepherd."

On the 16th of June of this year, Rebecca, the wife of my only
surviving brother, left her body, and was welcomed to the evergreen
shores of the summer-land, by her father, mother, our father, mother,
my spirit-bride and her father, mother, and my two brothers who had
long gone before. She was a good, honest woman, a veritable help-meet
to my brother, and we all gratefully cherish the memory, which is the
best attained by any life, that she left the world better than she
found it.

One by one, we miss the voices which we loved so well to hear,
One by one their kindly faces in the darkness disappear.

On the evening of the 16th of August in this year, an experience
came into our lives which changed the whole current of our religious
thought, and forever banished from our minds all fear of the so-called
death, and all doubt as to the eternal continuity of existence.

My brother, my wife, four chil