the fragments of their children's food and offered her a lodging on a
hard and lowly bed, when no little crowd of schoolboys left their
sports to cast stones after the roving enthusiast,--then did Catharine
return to Pearson's dwelling, and made that her home.

As if Ilbrahim's sweetness yet lingered round his ashes, as if his
gentle spirit came down from heaven to teach his parent a true
religion, her fierce and vindictive nature was softened by the same
griefs which had once irritated it. When the course of years had made
the features of the unobtrusive mourner familiar in the settlement,
she became a subject of not deep but general interest--a being on whom
the otherwise superfluous sympathies of all might be bestowed. Every
one spoke of her with that degree of pity which it is pleasant to
experience; every one was ready to do her the little kindnesses which
are not costly, yet manifest good-will; and when at last she died, a
long train of her once bitter persecutors followed her with decent
sadness and tears that were not painful to her place by Ilbrahim's
green and sunken grave.




MR. HIGGINBOTHAM'S CATASTROPHE.


A young fellow, a tobacco-pedler by trade, was on his way from
Morristown, where he had dealt largely with the deacon of the Shaker
settlement, to the village of Parker's Falls, on Salmon River. He had
a neat little cart painted green, with a box of cigars depicted on
each side-panel, and an Indian chief holding a pipe and a golden