CHAPTER XI.



THE MILLER OF HOUGHTON--AN HOUR IN HUNTINGDON--OLD HOUSES--
WHITEWASHED TAPESTRY AND WORKS OF ART--"THE OLD MERMAID" AND "THE
GREEN MAN"--TALK WITH AGRICULTURAL LABORERS--THOUGHTS ON THEIR
CONDITION, PROSPECTS, AND POSSIBILITIES.

After a little more than a week's visit in St. Ives and neighboring
villages, I again resumed my staff and set out in a westerly
direction, in order to avoid the flat country which lay immediately
northward for a hundred miles and more. Followed the north bank of
the Ouse to Huntingdon. On the way, I stopped and dined with a
gentleman in Houghton whose hospitality and good works are well
known to many Americans. The locality mentioned is so identified
with his name, that they will understand whom I mean. There was a
good and tender-hearted man who lived in our Boston, called Deacon
Grant; and I hope he is living still. He was so kind to everybody
in trouble, and everybody in trouble went to him so spontaneously
for sympathy and relief, that no one ever thought of him as
belonging to a single religious congregation, but regarded him as
Deacon of the whole of Boston--a kind of universal father, whose
only children were the orphans and the poor men's sons and daughters
of the city. The Miller of Houghton, as some of my readers will
know, is just such another man, with one slight difference, which is
to his advantage, as a gift of grace. He has all of Deacon Grant's
self-diffusing life of love for his kind, generous and tender