trials were over, and every one manifests great pleasure that they are so. If we only can get Mr. Hall, we shall be secure of a respectable society as well as a good minister. He came this afternoon, after I had half written my letter, and made us a social visit, and was very easy and agreeable; in this respect he has improved very much since he first came,―among entire strangers he appeared diffident and embarrassed. But that has passed away; though he is a truly modest man, he seems to possess the social turn which is so desirable in a minister. You do not know how attentive all the law-students have been to the preaching. [ think it quite an object that young persons just entering life should exhibit such a disposition, as I do believe it will have a valuable effect on their future conduct.

As you may receive my letter at a time when you are not at leisure to read a volume, I think I had better say farewell. With love to your family circle, ever affectionately yours,

S. L. HOWE.

It will of course naturally be seen that no difference in the forms of their religious belief ever affected, in the smallest degree, my mother's feelings towards her Orthodox neighbors, or theirs to her. One whom she reverenced has said, "A saint should be as dear as the apple of an eye." And so they were to her, in all times and places. One lovely Christian woman in the Old Church, who distributed tracts every six months through certain

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districts, was wont to call at these regular intervals on my mother, some years after our church was formed, with her package. She would make a long call, talking delightfully on many topics of common interest, and, just as she left, would drop the tracts in my mother's lap; who thanked her, laid them quietly in her mending-basket, and cordially urged her to come again. It was somewhat of a surprise to me, as soon as Mrs. E. had gone, to see her gather up the tracts in her apron, and drop them one by one into the fire; watching with a peculiarly beaming countenance the destruction of such cheerful titles as "Can these Dry Bones Live?" "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," &c., &c.

Why my straightforward mother should never have told Mrs. E. she did not want the tracts, and would not have them, I could not sce; and I told her so. "Why, my dear," she exclaimed, "that woman is a saint. If I were to tell her that, she would stop coming to see me, and I should lose a visit I enjoy. She thinks she is doing God service in bringing me these tracts. Let her think so. I am sure there is nothing casier than for me to burn them up, so that they may never 'pison the fountains' in this house."

The establishment of the Round-Hill School in 1823, and of the Law School soon after, of which Judge Howe was the head, and its most inspiring influence, made an era in the life of my parents, from which they dated many of their highest social privileges. The coming of my Uncle and Aunt

Howe to Northampton in the year 1820 had been a source of unmixed satisfaction to both of them. At last, those retired and admirable lives that had been gathering strength and resource among the quiet hills of Worthington were to be brought into closer intercourse with a more extended circle, and to taste the delights of wider influence and more appreciative society. Ah! it is the destiny that grows as life wears on, that is the fine one! And yet in these latter days of luxury and over-refinement, we grudge those years in the lives of young people, when comparative retirement and privation and exertion are really fitting them for a middle age of highest usefulness and enjoyment. We want them to begin with all the gathered store of appliances with which we end. How grave a mistake!

The two schools brought to Northampton a corps of professors and teachers, such as few colleges have ever seen. Messrs. Cogswell and Bancroft, who were the first teachers in the Round-Hill School, were the first in this country to exemplify the system of the German Gymnasium; and all their arrangements were made on a scale of magnificence for that day, which soon attracted the sons of the wealthy from all parts of the country. In the summer-time, families from Virginia and the Carolinas would take boarding-places in the neighborhood, to be near their sons who were in the school; and my father delighted in his rare opportunities for intercourse with some of the choicest spirits of the South. For the Hamiltons and Middletons and Draytons and Waynes, with many others, found

themselves soon at home in the hospitable house whose front-door always stood open; and from the Law School came daily incursions of professors and scholars, whom Mrs. Burt would always designate to my mother (when she asked from the nursery who had come in) as "only the every-day gentlemen." Among these were Hooker Ashmun, George S. Hillard, George Tyng, Timothy Walker, Wm. Meredith, Russell Sturgis, and others. What stant and pleasurable excitement for the grown-up sisters and cousins this society made, and what an entertaining time for my mother's little children, who were pets and companions always! How rarely we ever felt that we were put to bed to be got out of the way, although our hours were carly and regular!

con

CHAPTER XI.

Happy will that house be in which the relations are formed from character, after the highest and not after the lowest order; the house in which character marries, and not confusion and a miscellany of unavowable motives. . . . The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.-EMERSON.

How

WOW full to overflowing were my mother's days at this period of her life! It was the hey-day of her existence, in which little thought of self came to mar her absolute enjoyment of Nature, of her family, of society, and of choicest friends. Her perfect health made her life of activity a pleasure as well as a duty, and to this health there were few interruptions. During the months preceding the births of her children she suffered a great deal, and as her strength and vigor prevented her from claiming any immunity from care or exertion, she had not the rest she should have taken. But the births of her children were the slightest possible causes of retirement or anxiety in her case. She had never a physician at any time,- the faithful Burty carrying her through these occasions with excellent care and skill; and she able the very next day to sit up in her large easy-chair, with her mending-basket and book beside her, making first one and then the other her pastime for some hours of each day. week was all the time that Burty ever could succeed

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