XIV.

I PAID a visit to my brothers. I found Jesse quite plea santly situated, and contented;-in fact, too well contented to encourage me with the hope of his getting a great deal of culture, or acquiring any moral power or social elevation. A harmless, drowsy, peaceful life in the senses answered all his wishes, and circumscribed his sphere. It gratified me to look upon a face so amiable as his, and to hear everybody call him kind and clever, and assure me he would be a virtuous man; at the same time it would have pleased me more, could I have seen him less elated with mere creature comforts, and more interested in a book, more eager for intellectual pleasures, and inspired with more manly hopes and aims.

So long as fortune smiled on us all, and Jesse possessed these comforts of his choice, I knew he would have as much happiness as merely sensuous objects, mingled with virtue and kindness, could give; but if misfortune returned upon us, I feared that he would be ill-prepared to resist the shock, or shield his brother and sister. However, I spent a very pleasant week with Jesse. We enjoyed morning walks together, and I read to him until he confessed that a passage or two in Goldsmith and Irving gave

him real interest. His room was arranged more pleasantly, and he was given a couple of interesting books. We conyersed on old times together, commencing with a laugh, as we related some incident of our young sports and adventures, and ending in tears, as we spoke of our dear parents, and remembered how happy we were the last bright summer that our father was at home. Our riddles were repeated. Old Blue Beard was reviewed. Jesse remembered Jack Sprat and his amiable wife, and he thought, when he was married, if he and his wife made out to harmonize their contrasted tastes as well as that exemplary couple did; and, while he couldn't eat any fat, and his wife couldn't eat any lean, they might drink the broth together, and lick the platter clean, he would ask no more of wedded life.

I described the rapture that thrilled me, and the shouts of joy I sent from basement to attic, when I found in my stocking, one Christmas morning, a pictorial copy of Mother Hubbard, that famous epic of the nursery. Jesse had not forgotten how his head swam as he saw the picture and read the poem of the old woman who was soaring up and away, broom in hand, "seventy times higher than the moon," to dust the stars, and "brush the cobwebs from the sky."

I related something I had read of "Eyes and No Eyes," in Mrs. Barbauld. Jesse remembered an incident of Robinson Crusoe. I was rehearsing " Edwin and Angelina," or Lady Margaret and Sweet William," while he was admiring that wonderful sagacity of the King of Hearts, which detected and exposed the cunning rogue who stole the

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damson tarts and spoiled a royal feast,

"all on a summer's day." I climbed the delectable mountains, hand in hand with Christian, and was fanned by cool breezes from the land of Beulah, while he sat wondering if ever the cars would go faster than that marvellous man "of our town," whom the robbers came to rob one day; and who "ran fourteen miles in fifteen days, and never looked behind him!"

We

We recalled our experiences in Becket court. retraced our May rambles in "Paradise," and repeated our pic-nics on Baker's Island and the Juniper. We talked of the Buxtons till I think their ears must have burned. We did not pass over our good old Bessie Plympton. The Crazy Juror was pitied; Haman Doust, the hangman, came in for a share of our conversation, as having executed Merrill Clark, and been the terror of Salem when we were young; and we remembered how we trembled, and sometimes fought the old torment, as he caught us in his snaky arms, pressed us to his face, and bearded or kissed us.

I remained with Jesse a week, and went to see Walter. He was still living with my Aunt Dorcas, in Danvers Aunt Dorcas was about two years younger than my mother, and though she was much plainer looking, she recalled mother's image to my mind. She was left a widow, without children, about two years before mother died. She was left with a moderate competence and a fine warm home, which was shared with her husband's mother and a servant girl, whom she took from the almshouse when young. She was a woman of much resolu

tion; she managed her affairs with a masculine hand and judgment, and her fire-side was one of the most cheerful in town.

But my aunt Dorcas was not the woman to have the care of a boy like Walter. Of this I was now more convinced than ever, and I had much sadness during my visit. Like my mother, she was a person of strong and warm attachments, and though she had nothing but bereavement to afflict her in my uncle's death, and many things to comfort her, which poor mother could not enjoy, her heart, notwithstanding, was so deeply wounded, that she was deranged for a whole year after, and that derangement left her with a morbid tenderness and a weak and capricious judgment. She almost worshipped that good mother, who blessed her home, while to Walter she was a slave.

She seemed unwilling that Walter should become a man, or possess any manly ambition. Indeed, she often said she wished his hands might never grow, nor harden; nor his feet lose their dimples, nor his soft face get brown or bearded; and he might always be a child. She could deny him nothing that he desired. She was always telling him what a noble boy he must be; how generous, how self-denying, how persistent in the right and true, and yet she was educating him to disappoint her counsels.

And if my brother had been ever so unselfish, taking so many attentions to himself, and sharing so many favors alone, he was in danger of losing the most manly dispositions. I was grieved to discover the dangers that beset him on every hand. Still, with all his truancy, Walter

managed to master his lessons, and acquire a taste for reading, geography, and arithmetic, and I saw in him enough that was good, and kind, and manly, to console me; and, on the whole, I enjoyed my visit much. The season was so pleasant, I could not help seeing the world in many brilliant lights. It was the first of October, and the sky for a whole week was a perfect blaze of warm and yellow glory. The forests were unusually gorgeous. The oak with its russet leaves, the ash with its purple, maples in scarlet and vermillion, sweet liquidambers in their light crimson robes, mingled with green pines and hemlocks, with dogwood berries and sumach plumes, gave all the splendors of fairy romance to the woods.

The house within was cheerful, but we could not remain within doors. We were out in the pleasant sunshine during the day, and under the great, warm, smiling moon at night. We went into the chestnut woods and scented their fine autumnal odors, and gathered their brown fruit.

We visited Lynn Springs, and boated half a day. We sat down by the silver brook where Harmony Grove has since risen, and listened to its waters; read Burns' “ Highland Mary," and fancied we heard the gurgling Ayr. Then Jesse came over, and we went to the old Broadstreet burying-ground in Salem, and spent two hours by mother's grave. It actually seemed as if mother's spirit had risen, and we had entered the sphere of her attraction. I could hardly force myself away from the hallowed spot; and when Walter said he felt something press his head, and a strange sensation run down his arms and